I can recall a time in our history when police officers and soldiers were so afraid of our leaders and the political affiliation with gangsters that they became largely impotent.

This syndrome came to a head in 1988 when gangsters from western Kingston dragged a man named Jerome Whyte out of the Darling Street police post and murdered him on the steps of the station.

This was the tipping point for the then famous gangster Lester Lloyd Coke, otherwise called Jim Brown, who was charged for this murder and remanded. It was whilst he was in remand that he was served extradition documents for the United States of America. Therefore, the showdown that took place for his son decades later did not occur for him.

This disgrace transpired because the armed forces were in such a state of vulnerability that they feared that challenging political gangsters would result in politically motivated sanctions being brought against them.

I saw the armed forces rebound from this dark period of our history where our leaders were our warlords.

High morale returned, only to be destroyed once again after years of attacks by the media resulted in the appointment of a civilian, but former military officer to lead the force. This civilian, Colonel Trevor McMillan, was an outspoken critic of the police force and took on its leadership with an agenda to clean it up.

He was a good, brave man, but badly advised. Morale plunged again! Police officers were mocked publicly, and entities were created to humiliate them. One such is the famous ‘never never’ police station, where you were transferred to do nothing other than be the victim of a shaming campaign. Morale sunk low.

Years later, after the appointment of Francis Forbes, morale returned. This, despite the force being battered at every turn by human rights activists from the mid-90s.

We saw morale again plunge in 2010, when the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) was created on a precept of mistrust of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF). They were battered for years in a campaign fought on a principle of being able to lay charges to lock up police officers like common criminals, rather than await a ruling by the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP).

Tens of millions were spent by the competing organisations that could have been spent assisting the very warriors who fight whilst you all sleep. But again, I saw morale return. INDECOM adapted, the JCF adapted, reason prevailed.

The recent public demonstration regarding the non-payment of overtime and the general mood of the armed forces currently are indicating that we are in danger of police confidence plunging once again.

Have you seen those fights with taxi men who have broken the law on video? The policemen participating in these skirmishes are motivated to enforce the law. They could look the other way. When you see that type of physical confrontation, it’s because they’re willing to fight to enforce those laws.

It is the same fervour that gets operations teams to do suicide patrols between zinc sheets in the dead of night, to protect paupers who are so failed by our system that they likely cannot even read this column.

You see, it is the confidence that now exists that did not exist in 1988 why that murder could take place on the steps of that station over a traffic dispute. So stop taking that confidence for granted.

The pay disputes have resolutions, but to fix them you must listen. The Government has a budget that it is not utilising to pay salaries of police officers. This is because they have not filled the positions. So if the money exists, use it to pay for overtime so that the police can earn more money and more saturation of the high-crime zones can become possible.

Why is it such a big deal to get past this issue? Overtime pay is the norm in Jamaica. I understand it needs a control mechanism, but I’m sure if you are efficient enough to build highways, you are efficient enough to create a control system. This is the only country I know that forbids overtime for police officers. The stipend offered now is not real overtime, it is absolute rubbish.

There is a culture of procrastination that can take over organisations, including governments. Almost nothing can be done differently without it walking to Jericho. If a policy initiative can take this long, then we are doomed.

So, I have been thinking: Is it that overtime will result in police officers earning too much money? Is it maybe that there is a perception that police officers should remain in a particular earning range?

This thought process appears to exist and it transcends party politics. It is now culture. So we prefer to give the money back rather than spend it on those believed to be unworthy? Is this the mindset?

Be careful. I have seen police drop their hands and become frustrated. No one wins. I saw it due to politics and crime in the 1980s. I saw it due to a change in leadership in the 1990s. I saw it when our own citizens went to international fora to vilify our warriors for decades. I saw it when INDECOM was created in 2010.

I am seeing it again. Now it’s happening because of this wage dispute. This is fixable and everybody can win, the police and the public.

Always remember that after our own politicians almost destroyed this country in the 1970s, it was the police and army that stepped in to fight the enemy that we created.

When the foreign police officer programme failed to yield the results that were expected despite still being useful it ended, it was men and women who were previously deemed incapable who had to step back in and continue. They could have refused.

This is a recurring decimal and has been for the last 40-plus years. It always happens after those very same men and women have been trampled upon. No wonder it keeps happening. If you keep stepping in to fight every time after getting beaten up by your leaders or a system, then you will always be taken for granted. It is the battered wife syndrome played out in an organisational setting.

There are solutions, but first you must listen. Then, you need to think outside of the box. Then stop finding reasons that something cannot work and find ways to make it work.

There are issues in this country that we cannot fix easily. Some fixes will involve constitutional change. Some require funding we do not have. Some will impact us internationally and too dramatically.

This is not one of those issues. If you cannot raise the pay significantly, then raise the opportunity to earn more dramatically.

Quite frankly, if this were an issue impacting the private sector, we would have already worked it out.

The parliamentary process has become too bureaucratic. I understand why. Laws and policies too easy to change can allow for the imposition of laws too oppressive to survive.

At this point though, the issue of not fixing the salary issues of the armed forces has become an accepted norm, rather than an obstacle to be hurdled.

Nothing has really changed in any big way in the JCF in decades. The few changes that have been made were to increase control mechanisms, not to improve the conditions and morale of the membership or its auxiliaries. It’s time to care for your warriors.

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