Government has declared the crime situation a crisis "both in terms of the increase in violent crime...and the lack of confidence in the Police Department..."
A reorganization of the Police Department will be unveiled on the 2nd June. So will that mean that commissioner Crispin Jeffries will be removed? The prime minister is quoted in today's Amandala as saying that all options are on the table. And while Jeffries has had a tough year as the top cop - tonight we'll look back at the time before he was that top cop - to the 2005 era when he emerged as the super-cop.
To do so, we look back at a story Jules Vasquez first aired a year ago in May of 2009. It's a classic, and amidst all this talk of change, we remember Jeffries for the star that he is.
Jules Vasquez Reporting,
There are few images on TV so immediate, so shocking that they will make whoever's watching shake their heads in disbelief. And Crispin Jeffries has had more of those moments than anyone
[Crispin Jeffries in scuffle with female student and with workers in front BTL Compound.]
And while those moments will never be forgotten - and videotape will make sure of that - look beyond the heat and drama, to a single frame....and in a picture, anarchy can seem almost pacific, the players stripped of their momentum and charge, the wild hysteria of the moment flattened into a single frozen image, all the emotion and action compressed into a single frame.
And strip that frame of context and circumstance and you see in these images, a performer. And if you don't believe that just watch the way Commander Jeffries stepped down the National Assembly stairs, it was more than an offensive, it was a solo, an operatic aria upon a stage of anarchy. In these moments, Jeffries is unruffled, almost regal, never emotional, the air of a thespian, and the presence of a star, an entertainer on a stage set by the media, watched by the masses.
Jeffries to Jules Vasquez: "put right in the face Jules, right in the face. You want to see it? Thank you goodbye."
After all, what does the media thrive on? Action. And Jeffries gave it to us, in heaping servings.
Jeffries to Jules Vasquez: "Just go around."
"That is unacceptable and I will not accept that."
So, we can forgive the cocky mis-projections whether in word.
Crispin Jeffries: "Watch how we will clear this easy."
So easy that three hours later it ended up in this. Like he said, a mis-pronouncement but there are about to be mis-projections as in this case when tear gas came wafting back into the House meeting. Through it all Jeffries - so often the subject of the crowd's ire - never blinked, never became outwardly angry, well maybe just once, very famously so.
[Jeffries removing media from City Center on election night 2006.]
But then, don't we all get emotional:
_Jules Vasquez,
"He is walking away and the little switch trips. And I have to say that because look at this, he comes towards our cameraman, we aren't even advancing. Alex Ellis our cameraman was standing still and Mr. Jeffries goes to him and simply arrests him for no reason. The man has the camera on his shoulder. This is a muzzling of the press. This is the systematic lunacy that Crispin Jeffries brings."
At the time I was angry because he arrested camera-man Alex Ellis for nothing at all really, but I see it now as just one more performance - things were starting to drag, he perked it up - not a lapse of reason, but a slowdown in the action, and we were brought into the show to liven things up, brought in to share the light and heat of center stage. But the point is we never took it personally, we were doing our job and he was doing his - both of us probably with too much zeal - and that it provided some of the best television theater ever was incidental....or was it central? Maybe we'll never know.
So for now ground control to Commander Jeffries, we will miss you on the frontline, through the scrum of batons, the crush and clatter of stones and shields, the haze of pepper spray, the canisters of tear gas...you may be commissioner now, but on those days of anger and agitation, you were the boss, brutal, calm and collected.
At the time Jeffries was the commander of operations.
