A frequently asked question over the years is whether or not the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) should be disbanded and a new police force created. Many influential people have said publicly that the JCF, as an organisation, is not capable of transformation or being effective, and that the only choice is to disband it and create a new force that has values consistent with today's needs.

One of the main arguments is that the JCF was created at a time when the “colonial masters” wanted to control the local population, and therefore it was set up to be repressive rather than supportive of the ordinary citizen. Others think that the corruption is so embedded that the only way to stop it is to disband it and “come again”.

Recently Minister Montague was emphatic in saying that the JCF will not be disbanded, and many came out in strong opposition. In the past I have come out in support of disbanding the JCF, but I have been giving some thought to this matter recently.

One of the primary arguments to support disbanding is that the JCF cannot as an organisation be an effective crime-fighting force, and the fact is that in many ways the only “firewall” between the citizens and the full brunt of crime is the JCF. Therefore we need to have a JCF that is effective in fighting crime, and not one that is known more for police excesses and corruption.

While considering this, I asked myself whether dissolving the JCF would really be the panacea for the challenges faced by the force, or would we just be “throwing the baby out with the bath water”. This would raise the question of whether or not Minister Montague understands the real issues, as he has come out against dissolving the JCF.

There is no doubt that a strong and effective JCF is critical to dealing with not just the high-profile crime of murder, but also bringing back law and order to our country. And so it is very important that we do a critical and objective analysis of the question of whether or not the solution lies in disbanding the JCF.

My recollection of New York before Guilliani dealt with their crime problem is that there was also a lot of corruption in the NYPD and incidents of citizen abuse. They also had a significant crime problem, which included law and order issues. Guilliani, however, was able to bring back law and order to the streets, and transform the NYPD without disbanding the police force. Hence the following question for us: Why can't we do the same?

After giving the matter much thought and hearing the minister's strong views, I no longer believe that disbanding the JCF is the solution.

My main reason is that we have never truly given the JCF the environment in which to succeed. Think about it. If you raise a child in an environment of physical abuse and neglect, he will learn to perpetuate that. One of the things I talk about all the time is that children in certain communities have to contend with very serious problems: physical and mental abuse, violent lyrics, sleep deprivation from noise pollution, cramped living conditions, filthy surroundings, and yet we expect them to do as well in school as children who live in quiet neighbourhoods and have the benefit of a stable family life. I think that we have never really given the JCF a chance to “be the best they can be”, as we have not created the environment in which they can thrive.

One of the primary environmental challenges is that we have never provided adequate resources for the JCF. As far back as I can remember, the JCF has always lacked an adequate, efficient, and properly managed transportation fleet. The JCF seems to be always short of vehicles, and instead of having a vehicle assigned to each police officer, as exists in other countries, we sometimes don't even have a vehicle assigned to a police station. And then we question why they take so long to respond to 119 calls, as if we expect them to jump on a JUTC bus and be at the scene of the crime in five or 10 minutes.

We have also not deployed the latest technology needed to assist them in the fight against crime. The vehicles are not properly equipped with the ability to check on a driver's history, and we have also failed to roll out technological aids such as cameras on the roads to prevent the physical deployment of police at every stop light to bring order to the traffic.

This challenge, of course, is magnified by the lack of a ticketing system that works, and so even issuing tickets seems to be a waste of time, as the courts are not connected to the ticketing system, and the police don't have ready access to it. So we end up with people having hundreds of tickets outstanding.

And even when the police are able to identify that someone has hundreds of tickets outstanding, they are unable to do anything about it as they do not have the legislative support: Parliament has taken over 10 years to pass the amendments in the Road Traffic Act to give them the tools. The judges also have little confidence in the ticketing system, and therefore do not give maximum sentences.

The marine division also lacks the boats necessary to patrol our porous borders, despite an attempt to address this. I wonder why we haven't thought of using technology like drones to monitor what comes in and goes out of the island illegally.

These are just a few of the challenges faced by the JCF. I know that the minister is making significant efforts to address these resource issues, and the recently read budget demonstrates the government's commitment to this. I am also aware that the head of traffic, Calvin Samuels, has been provided with more resources to address the road challenges and we have seen the results of this recently. But we still need to provide more resources and support (such as passing the road traffic amendments) to “change the game”.

This is no different from how our governments have approached various institutions. The one that comes to mind for me is the NSWMA, which, despite the best efforts of the very supportive Minister McKenzie, has been prevented from giving better service because the fiscal programme has shut off the needed resources.

So the next time we ask the question of whether we should disband the JCF or not, we need to remember that we have never really given the organisation a chance to be the best it can be, and so the first thing we need to do is fix the environment in which they operate, and give them the necessary resources to carry out what we ask them to do.

Dennis Chung is the author of Charting Jamaica's Economic and Social Development AND Achieving Life's Equilibrium. His blog isdcjottings.blogspot.com.

Email: drachung@gmail.com