JENSEN LA VENDE

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty pol­i­cy ad­vis­er Pro­fes­sor An­tho­ny Clay­ton is ap­peal­ing to both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion to set aside their dif­fer­ences and al­low the Zone of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions to be used ef­fec­tive­ly.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, Clay­ton, who ad­vised the Ja­maican Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment the pol­i­cy, which is still in ef­fect, said that for it to work, there needs to be com­plete buy-in, as it re­quires decades-long im­ple­men­ta­tion.

“This is a long-term com­mit­ment. And you’re mea­sur­ing not in terms of months or years; you’re re­al­ly talk­ing about sev­er­al decades. It may take some­thing like 20 years to ac­tu­al­ly re­solve the so­cial prob­lems be­cause they are deeply em­bed­ded; they are root­ed in these com­mu­ni­ties, and they can­not be fixed overnight.”

Clay­ton, who not­ed that the pol­i­cy con­tributed to a re­duc­tion in the mur­der rate, be­lieves it should be im­ple­ment­ed for at least two decades, par­tic­u­lar­ly the build­ing com­po­nent, which fo­cus­es on chang­ing res­i­dents’ be­hav­iour through be­hav­iour-mod­i­fi­ca­tion pro­grammes aimed at chil­dren.

He added that po­lit­i­cal trib­al­ism has been “the bane and de­struc­tion” for many years.

“We have this dread­ful idea that every time there’s a change of gov­ern­ment, a new gov­ern­ment comes in and throws out every­thing that the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion was do­ing, whether it was work­ing or not. And this is fun­da­men­tal­ly ir­ra­tional. It would make so much more sense to do a re­view, sure, and to ter­mi­nate any­thing that’s not work­ing. But the pro­grammes which are ac­tu­al­ly gen­uine­ly gen­er­at­ing mea­sur­able pub­lic ben­e­fits should be bi­par­ti­san. There should be a cross-the-board po­lit­i­cal con­sen­sus on the need to con­tin­ue pro­grammes which are ac­tu­al­ly work­ing.”

Clay­ton added that po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sive­ness has erod­ed the work that had been achieved. He ex­plained that a na­tion­al crime con­sen­sus plan was borne from the pol­i­cy and was ini­tial­ly agreed to by both par­ties. A tip­ping point came when there were mis­un­der­stand­ings in the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the plan, in­clud­ing the length of time cit­i­zens were be­ing de­tained.

“Peo­ple could not be de­tained in­def­i­nite­ly with­out be­ing brought be­fore a judge and giv­en a prop­er tri­al. How­ev­er, this is not how it worked in prac­tice, and this was a ma­jor break­ing point. An­oth­er ma­jor chal­lenge was that there were al­le­ga­tions of very se­ri­ous cor­rup­tion against some se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, and so the com­mit­ments in the na­tion­al crime con­sen­sus plan with re­gard to cor­rup­tion be­came very po­lit­i­cal­ly un­com­fort­able.”

He said his pol­i­cy pro­pos­al stood on three pil­lars: clear, hold, and build. In the first stage, the se­cu­ri­ty forces clear the ar­eas by ar­rest­ing known of­fend­ers. The hold phase en­tails main­tain­ing a con­tin­ued po­lice pres­ence to en­sure crim­i­nal el­e­ments do not re­turn and in­flu­ence the com­mu­ni­ty. The build phase fo­cus­es on so­cial pro­grammes used to re­build the com­mu­ni­ties.

He en­cour­aged the au­thor­i­ties to ad­dress the is­sue of lack of con­fi­dence in the po­lice ser­vice, say­ing that was a crit­i­cal com­po­nent Ja­maica did not get right.

“So what I sin­cere­ly hope is that when you ac­tu­al­ly put the new pol­i­cy in­to op­er­a­tion in Trinidad, you do get it right, that you fol­low the ex­am­ples that we set, which ac­tu­al­ly worked.”

Clay­ton has called for an all hands-on deck ap­proach, which pas­tor and ac­tivist Clive Dot­tin and pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Coun­cil of Par­ents and Teach­ers As­so­ci­a­tion, Wal­ter Stew­art, ful­ly en­dorsed.

HOW IT WORKS

The Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Bill will em­pow­er Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to des­ig­nate Spe­cial Zones in ar­eas where there are “rea­son­able grounds” to be­lieve crim­i­nal­i­ty, gang vi­o­lence, or threats to pub­lic or­der are wide­spread.

Ac­cord­ing to the bill’s notes, the aim is to re­store the rule of law through joint se­cu­ri­ty force op­er­a­tions while safe­guard­ing the rights of peo­ple who live and work with­in the af­fect­ed com­mu­ni­ties. Once a zone is de­clared, the com­mu­ni­ty will be no­ti­fied by way of a no­tice, and a joint com­mand made up of se­nior De­fence Force and po­lice of­fi­cers would take charge.

Their pow­ers in­clude im­pos­ing cur­fews for up to 72 hours and con­duct­ing search­es of peo­ple, ve­hi­cles, and premis­es with­out a war­rant, based on rea­son­able sus­pi­cion. A de­c­la­ra­tion could last up to one hun­dred and eighty days, sub­ject to par­lia­men­tary over­sight.