Persons Urged to Refrain from Referring to the Police as a Measure for Scolding Deviant Children

Persons are being urged to refrain from making reference to members of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) as a measure for scolding deviant children.

This urging comes from Commanding Officer for the St. James Police Division, Senior Superintendent Vernon Ellis.

“Don’t see a child [misbehaving] and point to the police and tell the child ‘Oh, I am going to set the police on you’. We want to break that trend,” he stated.

Superintendent Ellis said police officers should instead be seen as stakeholder partners committed to enhancing public safety and citizen security.

“So everywhere in the parish now, we are trying to tell our citizens… that we want to change the culture; we don’t want you to see the police as an enforcer. We are pretty much partnering with you to make safer communities,” the senior officer emphasised.

He was addressing Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College Research Day, which was held at the institution’s campus in Granville, St. James, recently.

Superintendent Ellis contended that intervention and partnership work better together in tackling social issues.

“We [the police] are not the persons out to lock you up because, the problems that we are having, not all of them are crime [related]; some of them are social issues. So it’s not a situation that we can arrest ourselves out of. Intervention and partnership will work better,” he maintained.

Sam Sharpe Teachers’ College Research Day was held under the theme ‘The Impact of Crime on Education: The Western Jamaica Perspective’.

As part of the day’s activities, key stakeholders made presentations on data uncovered through research that was undertaken in relation to the theme.