Problem police - Southside youths accuse cops of blocking them from jobs but top cop says that’s not true
Published:Friday | June 1, 2018 | 12:00 AMCorey Robinson
The police are sworn to serve and protect, but several unattached youths in the Central Kingston community of ‘Southside’ Kingston, are questioning the role of some cops in their area.
The youths say the cops are preventing them from getting employment or embarking on entrepreneurial opportunities in the community.
There are at least two major construction projects now under way in the sometimes volatile community and the youths allege that the cops are preventing those who have had any brush with the law from getting employment on the sites.
Making his contribution to Gleaner/RISE Life Management’s on the Corner with Unattached Youths forum on Tower Street last Thursday,
Orrett Samuels was almost in tears as he relayed his difficulty to secure a job.
“One policeman made me bawl for weeks straight. They don’t want certain man to get work. They are picking and choosing who should get work, which is wrong,” argued Samuels, who said he has been desperately trying to pickup the pieces after his home was burnt down recently.
“Only certain youths are getting work on the site. A lot of youths are willing to turn around there lives but sometimes even them (police) who say they are here to protect and serve are taunting the youths,” he continued as he admitted to many run-ins with law-enforcement before deciding to change his approach to life.
“The police are not giving the youths the chance to free up. If a youth want to keep a party to get the place together and people can come ... the police get involved and they are telling you that you must lock it off. They are stopping the process!” added a heated Mark James.
He argued that the action of the police leave many youths disappointed and this could cause them to turn to a life of crime.
Several participants in the forum held at ‘Mango Tree Lawn’ charged that the action of some members of the police force was adding to the stigma already attached to youths of Southside.
But head of the Kingston Central Police Division, Superintendent Robert Gordon later dismissed the residents’ allegations regarding employment at the two construction projects.
He told The Sunday Gleaner that the police have no say on the work sites or other business establishments in the community.
“We have no influence in the employment selection process in the community. The only time that the police are called in is where there are frictions between men on the sites.
“Since I have been here last November we have been called on the work sites maybe on about three occasions to the best of my knowledge,” said Gordon.
He said that he has led regular walkthroughs in the community, and many persons in Southside have direct access to him via his cellular phone or his open door policy at the Kingston Central police station.
“Whatever it is that causes persons to think of the police the way they do, we have to first get from them what led them to have that point of view of their reality,” said Gordon.
“I have picked up where they are saying that the police deal with everybody as if they are criminals; and from where we sit, we strive to ensure that the police/public interaction policy is a major part of our briefing to our men and women who work in the streets,” added the superintendent.