Security Minister Looking To Fight Crime With New Police

In a recent meeting kept at the Mannings High School on Thursday involving the National security minister and Government stakeholders, Dr. Horace Chang outlined that the JCF has a plan to have at least 1200 officers added to the force.

With this in mind, the security minister has placed it out there that there is hope to have also a net gain of 900. The ultimate goal as outlined by Chang is to reach a target of 14,000 members of the JCF, and as such is planning to do so by training 1500 new police each year.

According to Chang, nothing of the sort was possible in 2020 due to the effects of the Covid-19 Pandemic, but regardless the Minister noted that the JCF has expanded their facility and as a result, 1250 new officers were trained in 2021.

With this new hope of increasing the number of trainees for the JCF this year and onwards to 1500, out of that the security minister explained that the move is being expected to push the numbers of recruits in the force up by an amount between 1100 and 1200 on the journey to 14,000.

As a way to better develop the Jamaica Constabulary Force, Minister Chang stated in the meeting that specific training will be given to the prospective officers in areas of investigations, special operations, technology, and other specialities. 

This type of approach based on what the Minister explained would be helpful in areas such as Westmorland that need additional crime-fighting tools to operate alongside the State Of Emergency (SOE’s) and the Zone of Special Operations (ZOSO), that have been implemented to help ease the violence.

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