Manual and Handbook for Detectives to be Published

An investigator’s manual and a handbook, designed to improve crime detection and investigative capabilities, are being prepared for publication by the Serious and Organized Crime Branch of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).
According to Assistant Commissioner of Police, Les Green, the manual and handbook are 98 per cent ready for publication. “They will be published very shortly. I haven’t got a definitive date.but certainly within the next couple of months. They are just being updated and going through a very final review because there have been a couple pieces of new legislation, which have come in, so those are being inserted,” he said at a recent JIS Think Tank.
He noted that more than 100 officers, who have already gone through the Level 1 detective course, are waiting on the publications to complete their training.
He explained that the training course covered areas such as witness care, “providing the impetus and the skills to provide really good statements from the witnesses and also interviewing skills, so that the officers can interview witnesses and the suspects when they get arrested”.
ACP Green told JIS News that although the witness care course has been in operation for more than two years, it is being reformed into a two-week training programme. “It is being delivered right across Jamaica and we are retraining all our investigators for traffic offences, fatal accidents etc., so this is a very intense course,” he pointed out.
He said that the course has received “favourable comments from the courts and the Director of Public Prosecution’s office, because it has increased the standard of evidence obtained from witness statements, which is a very vital part of any investigation”.
ACP Green explained that the officers, who want to become detectives, must pass the theoretical aspects provided from the investigator’s manual and handbook before proceeding to Level 2, where they will be trained as detectives.
“We are getting away from the times they used to attend for a large number of weeks and do theory and skills [courses] with theory being the priority and skills the minority, so now it will be a total skills course,” he stated.
With this new approach, he said, the detectives will be tested to ensure that “they have the interaction skills, the ability to communicate, the empathy and the ability to deduct what has happened at crime scenes from interpretation of what they see before them”. However, he reiterated that this will only be after they fully understand the theoretical aspects.
In the meantime, ACP Green has said that new courses will come on stream to assist the detectives as they carry out their tasks.
“We have the drafts of the other courses but they haven’t been refined sufficiently to deliver, but certainly this year, we will be delivering more high quality command and senior investigative courses for detectives, so that we improve not only the investigators but the management of those officers when they are involved in their work,” he informed.