Police personnel have been hiring themselves out as escorts for many years. Acting Commissioner Owen Ellington, who has spent about half of his life in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), would be well aware of a practice that has become entrenched.

It began with police personnel striking up informal relationships with various businesspeople, which developed into escorting cash-in-transit and included being present at business places for opening and closing periods. As a service to legitimate businesses, the police have stated publicly that they will escort cash-in-transit as a way of protecting against the menace of armed robberies.

We are not quite sure whether a formal strategy has been developed to deal with such requests. what we do know, however, is that there are police personnel who provide daily escort service, taking businesspeople from their homes to places of business using police resources, i.e., motor vehicles, petrol, arms and personnel, and returning them in the evening.

It is reasonable to question whether businesspeople should pay for their own security like ordinary people who have lost faith in the ability of the state to protect life and property.

When former commissioner Lucius Thomas revealed at a 2005 press conference that members of the police force were supplying criminals with bullets and using police vehicles to escort drugs and other contraband, it became obvious that the boundaries between legal and illegal activities were seriously blurred.

With such an ominous development being confirmed by the head of the police force, we expected then that all available resources would have been channelled towards rooting out the criminals in the force. Now, five years later, Acting Commissioner Ellington is lamenting the escalation in the actions of or participation by JCF members in criminal gangs.

first order of business

Challenging the power of the criminal gangs is never going to be successful, so long as there is collusion between criminals and the police. Tough talk by successive security bosses about cracking down and dismantling gangs has not resulted in any whittling away of gangs. Instead, they have become emboldened and their activities have escalated to new levels of audacity, including confronting the police in one-to-one combat.

The first order of business, Mr Ellington, is to clean up your own ranks. This task is more urgent than ever. Don't depend on members of the public to feed that information to you, because many of them do not trust the police. You need to look no further than the senior ranks for that information. Part of leadership must include knowing your staff and being aware of their activities.

high time

If there were any serious attempt to infiltrate and dismantle gangs, then already, the police would have been well aware of which ones among them were consorting with gang members. The officer corps of the JCF must be put on notice that they have a huge role to play in building a credible force.

It is high time that the JCF present to the country a detailed audit of what it has accomplished in the fight to cripple gangs and disrupt the cycle of criminal activities, such as gunrunning, extortion and drug smuggling. Of course, the police would say they have one hand tied behind their back because of the absence of strong legislative measures to deal decisively with criminal gangs. The commissioner needs to tell the nation what exactly is hampering their efforts, so that the people can demand of their government the kind of action that would give them more room to do their job.

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