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The Jamaican Constabulary Force is an organization with a lot of complex history behind it. On the
surface, their job is a simple one: ‘To Serve, Protect, and Reassure’.

These words are their motto, and it is these words that every police officer is to operate by. However, this is often easier said than done.

Time and time again, the brave men and women of the JCF find their tasks far more difficult than they
need to be, sometimes outright impossible, due to the problems they face while on duty.

These issues are many and varied, ranging from a lack of funding to mismanagement of resources. But perhaps the most challenging issue of all is the lack of trust and respect for their presence and authority by the average Jamaican citizen—the same people they are meant to safeguard.

Examples of this occur virtually every day, to the point where they oftentimes fly under the radar.

Every once in a while, though, a particularly notorious case manages to make its way to the public eye and highlight just how severe the matter truly is.

Earlier this week, one such case reared its ugly head, having been caught on video and shared across the social media space.

Last Monday (June 17), the incident in question occurred at a St Catherine school, where a major
altercation between a parent and a police officer occurred.

According to the official JCF report, the Spanish Town Police received a call from administrators of a primary school, who requested assistance in having a problematic parent removed from the campus for disturbing the peace.

However, things would only get further heated upon the arrival of the constabulary.

In spite of the efforts to peacefully extract the woman from the school, the situation would take a turn for the worse as the mother in question and a female police officer got into a physical altercation.

The video shows the rest in excruciating detail, with the policewoman grabbing onto the woman’s hair and the mother, in turn, drawing at her clothing, nearly leaving her exposed in several places.

In spite of the appeals of onlookers and the police themselves, the mother would refuse to comply with the police, having to be physically coerced into the police vehicle, actively resisting all the while. At one
point, the policewoman would move to bite the mother in an attempt to subdue her, something that
anti-police detractors would have a field day with.

Here, we can easily identify the lack of respect for authority. The mother at the St Catherine school was
approached by the police, and likely did not approach them with the respect owed to their position.

She definitely did not care enough to comply with the requests that she received to vacate the premises.

As such, the police had no choice but to use more forceful methods to get her to comply with them.

At this point, the mother did not cooperate, instead resisting the officers and getting into a standoff with the policewoman that was only broken when her male partner intervened to force the mother into the vehicle.

In many ways, this is an endemic problem in Jamaican society, one that can be traced back to our
roots.

The vast majority of the Jamaican population are the descendants of enslaved Africans and those
that are not absolutely influenced by them, their history, and their culture.

These individuals, due to their circumstances and situation, developed into a class that, by nature, was resistant to authority and would often times be disruptive in their fight for what they saw as right.

From the numerous slave revolts of the 18th and 19th centuries to the labour protests and riots of the 20th, the Jamaican majority has always consisted of agitators, eager to take the fight to whomever they see as the oppressor.

For better or worse, this culture has percolated into the modern day, with the populace now taking the fight against the institutions that maintain our society: the government, the courts, and, for the sake of this article, the police.

By nature, we are independent, undisciplined people, and this is the result. Most, if not all, figures of authority meet pushback, not even necessarily out of righteous anger, but sometimes just originating from a desire to ‘stand up’ for oneself, even if one is in the wrong, as the mother in the aforementioned video clearly was.

Faced with such problematic people, the figures in authority often find themselves between a rock and a hard place. Oftentimes, the only solution seems to be what one could call ‘tough love’, being harsher for the sake of getting the job done.

This method may be short-term effective, but in many cases, it is a double-edged sword with medium- to long-term negative consequences. Again, the video at the St. Catherine school shows this firsthand.

In the ensuing struggle between the mother and the policewoman, the latter bit the former during the struggle, something caught live on camera. This would invoke much outrage and disapproval from the public, which would call such actions undignified and unbecoming of the police force.

Now, I am not here to justify the policewoman’s actions. No doubt, in the heat of the moment, she made a move that she saw at the time as the best way to solve the matter. (Why there were no handcuffs present is beyond me, and a question for another time).

But semantics aside, it is these moves that further reduce the faith in and public perception of the Jamaica Constabulary Force, which in turn makes citizens less likely to cooperate, forcing the police to take more forceful action, which in turn produces even more friction and mistrust.

It is a never-ending cycle that feeds on its own products, consuming Jamaican society.

When you serve as the main civil force in a country, tasked with keeping order in the streets, it is absolutely vital that you are treated with the proper respect. Otherwise, it would be nearly impossible to do your job.

However, that respect is not just tied to the uniform one wears. It has to be earned. That being said, in the environment we have, it is incredibly hard for them to develop the trust they need when, from the outset, they are facing an uphill battle, in many ways not of their own making.

In fairness to the JCF, efforts have been made to address this issue via outreach programs and initiatives, both on the ground and through the media.

However, for true change to occur, it would need to be a combined effort, not just by one party but also by the other. Both the police and the average Jamaican citizen need to reach each other halfway. It cannot be one side or the other doing all the work.

Such efforts rarely succeed, and more often than not, they are abandoned as failures. What we need is a major societal effort from the ground up to increase the faith and acceptance of our authority.

What we need is a culture of discipline, though not subservience. Only then can we have any hope to break the cycle.