'Police should not be expected to clean up mess left by politicians'

Rights activist says cops given basket to carry water
BY TANESHA MUNDLE
Observer staff reporter mundlet@jamaicaobserver.com

HUMAN rights activist Yvonne McCalla-Sobers yesterday June 12th called for additional resources to be given to the police in order for them to conduct their duties efficiently.

The police, the rights activist said, have been given 'basket to carry water' and that the constabulary should not be expected to clean up the "mess" made by politicians over the years.
Yvonne McCalla-Sobers, head of the rights group Families Against State Terrorism, addressing Observer reporters and editors

Addressing editors and reporters at the Observer's weekly Monday Exchange at the newspaper's Beechwood Avenue headquarters in Kingston, McCalla-Sobers said the expectations of the police were unfair, adding that police officers were being mandated with an impossible task of cleaning up crime without the necessary resources.

"The police deserve better treatment, and better treatment means they deserve the resources that they need...," said McCalla-Sobers, president of the rights group Family Against State Terrorism (FAST).

The police have, for years, called for more resources to strengthen their fight against crime and violence. In addition to the calls for more police officers, the constabulary has over the years called for more motor vehicles, state-of-the-art equipment to help in forensic investigation, and more bulletproof vests, among others.

McCalla-Sobers, at the same time, said politicians were the root cause of the problems in most communities affected by crime, and they should not leave the problems up to the police to fix.
"...The police do not deserve to be put out there on the front line cleaning up what mess politicians make," she said.

McCalla-Sobers said, too, that it was not the duty of the police to implement social intervention programmes in crime-riddled communities in an effort to provide other alternatives for the residents.

"The police cannot do that. The police have a job and social intervention is not their job," she said.
McCalla-Sobers said that even though intervention by the police in some inner-city communities had in recent times shown a decline in crime in those areas, there has not been the necessary intervention by relevant government agencies to ensure that stability remains.

Citing police intervention in inner-city communities in Kingston such as Hannah Town, Tavares Gardens, better known as 'Payne Land', and Parade Gardens in 2004 as examples, she said the police were expected to restore calm to those areas with the expectation that the relevant authorities would follow up with the necessary social intervention. "But it did not happen," she said. "Social intervention is not their (police) job."

However, she said the police needed everyone's support.

"The police need our support, but they also need our support to act in ways that do not increase alienation in the community. We have to support a kind of policing that is going to do what the military called building hearts and minds. If we treat the innocent badly they will become supporters of the tyrants," McCalla-Sobers said.