What is noticeable about Owen Ellington is that he is not attending the job as an interim appointee. Already, he has enumerated his priorities as acting commissioner of police. And the good thing is that he is, at least in public, saying mostly the right things.

A likely concern for many people, though, is the warm embrace he has received by the Police Officers' Association, to go with an earlier endorsement by the Police Federation, the union of rank-and-file cops. People's fear is that these groups recognise Mr Ellington as an insider and that he will allow himself to be ensnared by the 'squaddie' syndrome that tends to incapacitate career police officers who rise through the ranks to the top. Usually, they are ineffective change agents, approaching reform only in small increments.

Lewin not liked

Indeed, it is not for nothing that Rear Admiral Hardley Lewin, the outsider who was made police chief, but recently, with more than a nudge from officialdom, gave up in disgust, was not particularly liked within the force. The resistance he encountered in his efforts to transform the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is well known.

Mr Ellington, who most people expect will, in due course, be confirmed as police chief, should bear this in mind. He can putter along and be popular within the constabulary, but with little to show at the end of his tenure.

Mr Ellington should also be aware, too, that understanding, intellectually, what is to be done is of importance. But more important is being able to summon the will to do it.

So, while we have no fundamental problem with Mr Ellington's plan, in the context of Jamaica's crime problem, to reorder the constabulary's "priorities by putting crime containment as number one and the restoration of public safety and confidence as number two", we insist that there can hardly be daylight between these objectives and fighting corruption in the police force.

Not good at law enforcement

It is more than conventional wisdom, but rather hard, cold fact, that a corrupt police will not be good at law enforcement and fighting crime. For in a democratic society, the legitimacy of law enforcement agencies comes not only through the force of law or their coercive power, but also from the trust the communities they serve repose in them. People, by and large, have to agree to be policed. The problem for the JCF is corruption, if not to the core, close to it.

We, therefore, welcome Mr Ellington's recognition that "we will have to accelerate the anti-corruption strategy", for the constabulary is at the "tipping point".

We presume he means that if nothing radical happens, the JCF is in danger of going over the precipice, rather than that, as an institution, it is ripe for, and willing to, accommodate change. If it is the former, Mr Ellington is right, in which case he has a tough job ahead of him that will demand some of the attributes that brought Admiral Lewin to his end. His personal integrity will be severely tested and ought not be found wanting.

Much will be learnt by how much, over the long run, the insiders are praising Owen Ellington.