Commentary

Cops asking for too much

MORE OFTEN than not, employees in this country, especially civil servants, get pay hikes no matter how poor their work is. Still, they have two-year collective bargaining agreements that guarantee pay hikes no matter what their productivity levels are. Does this make sense? No. But this is Jamaica.

Common sense is not so common here it seems.

I say this in reference to what has been happening with the bargaining agreement that the police and the Government have been trying to iron out for more than a year now. A brief synopsis of the situation is that the cops want a 47 per cent pay hike and the Government, partially bound by the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the trade unions, is unable to find a way to deal with the situation without threatening the already fragile MOU.

However, MOU or no MOU, a 47 per cent pay hike is unjustified and is a downright ridiculous demand. Now don't get me wrong, I think the police have a very difficult job to do and they should be compensated as such, but only if they have been doing a good job. But, quite frankly, they haven't.

I have many friends in the force and most of them are hardworking cops with families. They have mortgages to pay, school fees and rising utility fees and such, but what do they come to the bargaining table with?

The perception of corruption within the force is probably at its highest ever level, if Bruce Golding is to be believed, the police force has about a 20 per cent conviction rate on cases they investigate, extortion is rampant right under their noses in most precincts in the Corporate Area and St. Catherine, and they don't even enforce the simplest of laws in the land, so what justifies the 47 per cent pay hike?

It can't be because they get shot and killed defending the people of this land. Why? Because it is something each member chose to do. Nobody put a gun to anybody's head and said "go join the police force, now!"

Take the US Marines for example, who are over in Iraq getting their asses shot and blown off daily. If most people knew what they were getting paid they'd be surprised, and it was only just recently that their families got decent death benefits. Nobody forced them to join.

Target for criminals

Every single person who becomes a member of the Jamaica Constabulary knows that the minute he or she put on a uniform, he or she becomes a target for every criminal on the street. That person also knows that the pay and benefits suck. Everybody knows.

And while the Government should take a share of the blame for not giving the police the tools they need, the police make things harder for themselves to begin with. Here's why. They know they don't have the technology to fight crime effectively but they have, or I should say, had the people. If the police had made the people their friends, they could have done a decent job of combating crime until the technology arrived, but instead they have made themselves the enemies of the people and for that reason alone, the JCF should not even consider a pay hike.

A day does not go by, for example, when there isn't a controversial police shooting. And while we know that oftentimes civilians can be disingenuous, if people trusted the police many of the unjustified cries of police brutality would fall on deaf ears.

What has annoyed me is that the police are on 'go slow' in protest of the Government's unwillingness to yield to their demands. Guess what? As far as many Jamaicans are concerned, the police were already on 'go-slow' to begin with.

That is why there has been a shift away from the police to private security firms and more people are arming themselves now than ever before. So what justifies the exorbitant pay demands, absolutely nothing?

I believe that special concessions should be made for policemen because of all civil servants, potentially, they sacrifice the most but, trying to stick up the people of Jamaica only serves to make their jobs even harder and if possible, makes them even more unpopular than they are now. And, who benefits from that? No one.