Suppress crime with sustained JCF-JDF patrols

By Garth Rattray

Serious crimes were down, but murders were up by nine per cent last year. In recent times, our best respite from criminality, and especially murder (which is primarily gang related), came in 2010 during the shameful and violent Christopher 'Dudus' Coke extradition affair. Joint police-military action and patrols lowered our serious crimes significantly for quite a while.

As was feared, from the inner city of Tivoli Gardens, where many people met their untimely end, to the upscale community of Kirkland Heights, where businessman Keith Clarke was gunned down, the combined security force efforts resulted in the questionable homicide of several dozens of citizens.

The very real risk of possible excesses from war-trained soldiers, along with the blatantly obvious dangers of giving military personnel the power to stop, search, detain or arrest citizens, made me voice strong objections to the 2003 proposal to amend Subsection Three of Section Nine of the Defence Act. This would allow soldiers to "have all such powers as may lawfully be exercised, by members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force".

As it is, the prime minister can call up the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) to "secure and maintain" public safety and order. Under those circumstances, the following pertains: "Where any member of the Jamaica Defence Force is acting pursuant to directions referred to in the proviso to subsection (2), such member shall, while so acting, enjoy all such immunities, privileges and protection as are enjoyed by a member of the Jamaica Constabulary Force."

Another circumstance in which the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the JDF can be combined is whenever there is a state of emergency. In other situations, the military serves as back-up, defensive firepower for the constabulary in specified operations and curfews.

joint operations

What it all comes down to is this: Because our economy is doing so very badly and because we are obviously not engaging in enough of the sort of social changes needed to reduce our crime rate, all we can do is suppress it. Historically, the best way to achieve this is to combine the police and the military in a sustained way, and not just during temporary exigent, emergent or outright emergency situations.

The fear of human-rights abuses is not unfounded. Besides Jamaica's un-resolved questions surrounding the 2010 joint operations, other countries have had problems when they combined the police and military to fight crime, especially to stop the illegal drug trade. Their protracted war on drugs has resulted in numerous accusations of human-rights infringements and abuses.

On the other hand, in France, where joint police-military patrols are employed in their stratified response to terrorist threats (dubbed Operation Vigipirate), the soldiers have absolutely no police powers and are under orders from the constabulary. In that system, there appears to be no human-rights issues being raised.

It seems to me that our limited and transient police-military operations are not enough to suppress crime in the long term. The criminals become internally displaced as they migrate from 'hot' spots to 'cool' areas and import their criminality into those areas. And they move back into their former stomping grounds once the 'heat' is discontinued.

Perhaps the security ministry would consider training some JDF non-commissioned officers (NCOs) as police personnel. That way, squad leaders assigned to patrolling the streets would be fully trained 'militarised police'. This would result in increased and sustained joint patrols and free up additional JCF members to do more community policing, an activity that is well known to reduce crime.

I remember seeing the military accompanying and reinforcing the police on patrols in Spanish Town. They were a formidable deterrent to crime and an invaluable back-up when needed. Patrols should be used ad infinitum and not just as a temporarily measure.

Garth Rattray is a medical doctor with a family practice. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and garthrattray@gmail.com.