Dear Editor,
Commissioner Owen Ellington has laid out his road map for achieving Vision 2030, it is thought-provoking, analytical, well-researched, offers a perspective and comparison with Wilmot Perkins' Singapore without once mentioning the great man.
The commissioner sounds like someone who should be designing policy for the force and not operation. But with his minister abdicating that responsibility to the divine one, why not? Unfortunately we have heard all this before without any difference in approach. Mr Golding was asked while hosting his Wednesday evening talk show, why don't we benchmark Singapore? His response was dismissive, he said that any leader who went to Parliament and passed a law against spitting in public is not someone to emulate as his brand of governance couldn't work in Jamaica.
The commissioner sounds like someone who should be designing policy for the force and not operation. But with his minister abdicating that responsibility to the divine one, why not? Unfortunately we have heard all this before without any difference in approach. Mr Golding was asked while hosting his Wednesday evening talk show, why don't we benchmark Singapore? His response was dismissive, he said that any leader who went to Parliament and passed a law against spitting in public is not someone to emulate as his brand of governance couldn't work in Jamaica.
Maybe Mrs. Simpson-Miller will have a different perspective. Mr. Ellington believes that long prison sentences, executions and denial of bail especially for drug smugglers, gang members and persons caught with a gun or ammunition will ensure that Jamaica fulfills Vision 2030. He wants to cut out fines also. There is one problem, a trustworthy police force.
Trust is essential for co-operation. The Jamaican police force, headed by Mr Ellington, is killing innocent Jamaicans at an alarming rate. They are a law unto themselves and Mr Ellington didn't even mention that. We want to trust the police, but on too many occasions are statements by eyewitnesses fundamentally different from that of the police. The Jamaican police's credibility isn't only suspect by human rights bodies, the ordinary Jamaican, over time, has realised that the nursery rhymes trotted out as serious communication by CCN after shootings are too incredulous. Hence road blocks, street protests, demonstrations and fires whenever Mr Ellington's men kill us with impunity.
People who supported the police wholeheartedly have become lawbreakers because, Commissioner, they have lost faith in your force. Therefore before you can espouse measures about regulating our society you must first clean your own house. We are becoming more and more cynical when you kill a fireman and his relatives before a witness and label it a shoot-out;shoot at a car with young people allegedly on a robbery spree, again before witnesses, and kill a young lady. But even more egregious, one of your members shot a man lying injured on the ground, before the whole world to see, and your policemen who were present turned their collective backs.
Please, Mr Ellington, your arguments seem cogent but lack merit simply because you will not take responsibility for the ills of your dysfunctional organisation. Fix the police force and then your actions will convince us to support the policy directions you enunciate. Fix the police force so that every time someone is killed we believe the police over the most strident citizens. We don't want to know that when we dismantle criminal organisations we replace them with members of our police force who are rapists, murderers, butchers, child molesters and various sick individuals in uniform. Convince us commissioner that Vision 2030 will not pose for us a police state, since the only persons who can police a police state is the police.
Mark Clarke
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
Clean your own house first, Mr Commissioner
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Commissioner Owen Ellington has laid out his road map for achieving Vision 2030, it is thought-provoking, analytical, well-researched, offers a perspective and comparison with Wilmot Perkins' Singapore without once mentioning the great man.
The commissioner sounds like someone who should be designing policy for the force and not operation. But with his minister abdicating that responsibility to the divine one, why not? Unfortunately we have heard all this before without any difference in approach. Mr Golding was asked while hosting his Wednesday evening talk show, why don't we benchmark Singapore? His response was dismissive, he said that any leader who went to Parliament and passed a law against spitting in public is not someone to emulate as his brand of governance couldn't work in Jamaica.
The commissioner sounds like someone who should be designing policy for the force and not operation. But with his minister abdicating that responsibility to the divine one, why not? Unfortunately we have heard all this before without any difference in approach. Mr Golding was asked while hosting his Wednesday evening talk show, why don't we benchmark Singapore? His response was dismissive, he said that any leader who went to Parliament and passed a law against spitting in public is not someone to emulate as his brand of governance couldn't work in Jamaica.
Maybe Mrs. Simpson-Miller will have a different perspective. Mr. Ellington believes that long prison sentences, executions and denial of bail especially for drug smugglers, gang members and persons caught with a gun or ammunition will ensure that Jamaica fulfills Vision 2030. He wants to cut out fines also. There is one problem, a trustworthy police force.
Trust is essential for co-operation. The Jamaican police force, headed by Mr Ellington, is killing innocent Jamaicans at an alarming rate. They are a law unto themselves and Mr Ellington didn't even mention that. We want to trust the police, but on too many occasions are statements by eyewitnesses fundamentally different from that of the police. The Jamaican police's credibility isn't only suspect by human rights bodies, the ordinary Jamaican, over time, has realised that the nursery rhymes trotted out as serious communication by CCN after shootings are too incredulous. Hence road blocks, street protests, demonstrations and fires whenever Mr Ellington's men kill us with impunity.
People who supported the police wholeheartedly have become lawbreakers because, Commissioner, they have lost faith in your force. Therefore before you can espouse measures about regulating our society you must first clean your own house. We are becoming more and more cynical when you kill a fireman and his relatives before a witness and label it a shoot-out;shoot at a car with young people allegedly on a robbery spree, again before witnesses, and kill a young lady. But even more egregious, one of your members shot a man lying injured on the ground, before the whole world to see, and your policemen who were present turned their collective backs.
Please, Mr Ellington, your arguments seem cogent but lack merit simply because you will not take responsibility for the ills of your dysfunctional organisation. Fix the police force and then your actions will convince us to support the policy directions you enunciate. Fix the police force so that every time someone is killed we believe the police over the most strident citizens. We don't want to know that when we dismantle criminal organisations we replace them with members of our police force who are rapists, murderers, butchers, child molesters and various sick individuals in uniform. Convince us commissioner that Vision 2030 will not pose for us a police state, since the only persons who can police a police state is the police.
Mark Clarke
mark_clarke9@yahoo.com
Clean your own house first, Mr Commissioner
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