If you had spoken to any German citizen before August 1942, they would have told you that the war being waged by their country against Europe was a great idea.

Why would they? They were rolling over country after country like a bulldozer crushing lilies. This changed in Stalingrad, where Germany suffered a hard defeat from the Russian army in August 1942.

Now, if you talk to any German citizen today, they will tell you the war was the single worst thing their country has ever been involved in, and it was a bad idea from the start. So what was unquestionably the worst decision a country ever made was at one time considered the best decision.

I am old enough to remember the day after the 1980 General Election in Jamaica. It was October 31 and the country had just voted the People’s National Party (PNP) out in a landslide after a viciously fought battle conducted over four years since the 1976 General election, which was held during a state of emergency.

Michael Manley was viewed as a pariah who had destroyed the country. Now, whether he was bad or good is subjective, but whether the country’s economy was destroyed is not. We were literally bankrupt.

Fast-forward 40 years and Michael Manley is now considered a hero and it is regarded as bad form to criticise him. I imagine that this is largely because most of the country’s populace benefits from the social reforms he put in place. So facts are subject to change depending on when the history book is written and by whom.

I look at the performance of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) over the last six years and I ask myself, how will history write this period and what will be spoken of as ‘fact’?

Will it be written as a failed period in our law enforcement history, as it was expressed in a recent poll? Or will it be a period remembered for all major crimes decreasing and the beginning of the end of gang rule? Will it be remembered as a time that the JCF solved more murders in one year than the New York Police Department and solved almost all of the watershed cases?

This is the part where everyone is about to send me unkind e-mail. I know exactly what you’re thinking. Well, let me remind you of a few things. The Klansman Gang trial put away 16 criminals in one hearing. How often have you seen that many people convicted and imprisoned in one trial?

The Philip Paulwell family murders were cleared in weeks, not months. Khanice Jackson’s murder was solved within 10 days and the killer convicted soon after. The recent murder of the vice-principal of GC Foster, Gibbs Williams, was solved in under two weeks.

Several of the Beryllium robbers are before the High Court facing criminal charges. One of the men was held within 12 hours of committing the robbery.

Yet with all of this I see a poll showing that the public believes that the JCF’s investigative ability is insufficient and has not improved. So I wonder, what will be considered as fact?

Will it be the actual crime data or the opinion of the polled public, who know as much about analysing crime statistics as I know about growing yam?

The JCF is led by a management team. Each member of the team controls the various branches
— namely Criminal Investigation, Operations, Administration, and Force Development and Logistics. The overall officer in charge is the commissioner of police. Most of the people interviewed don’t even know this simple fact.

This is not because they’re simple, but rather because they don’t really bother to research it any more than I research developments in growing peppers.

Therefore, I can’t properly assess the performance of the various crops in Jamaica. I just haven’t made the time to study them.

I say this to say that I really hope that what becomes accepted fact in history is not that the JCF underperformed during the tenure of Major General Antony Anderson because it would be an unfair indictment against him and his management team.

Equally important, it would be an unfair indictment against the rest of us who have given up our sleep and risked our lives to achieve the many successes over the last six years.

Even more important, it would not be true to say the JCF underperformed. The performance of the force has been outstanding and Anderson and all of the leadership need to be recognised for their contribution from all four branches of the force.

This type of misinformation can lead to miscarriages of justice, like the new commissioner being selected from outside the force.

This wouldn’t be fair or beneficial to the organisation. Any four of the deputies are capable of handling the job and all four of the deputies have done an incredible job in their individual portfolios.

Christopher Columbus is revered by Europeans and condemned by the ethnic population in the Americas. Was he a great man or a purveyor of genocide? This is subjective and is determined by whether you descend from the conquered or the conqueror.

There can be no such disagreement when we assess our police force over the last six years. Why? Because statistics exist. There are measurements. It’s basic arithmetic.

Let the facts of the force’s performance be determined by scientific evaluation and not poll results. Forget everything to include politics or assessment of government performance.

All that matters is that the men and women in uniform, irrespective of their rank, are judged by their performance and their contribution appreciated.

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