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Yesterday, Jeffries allegedly attacked Lynette Small with a pair of scissors and stabbed her.

One Last Goodbye For Ground Commander Jeff

As we reported at the top of the newscast, Commissioner of Police, Crispin Jeffries is leaving the job on Wednesday. Here at 7news, we've always had a special relationship with Jeffries - particularly when he was commander of operations during the tumult of 2005.

Many times, it may have seemed like we were bitter enemies, but we were merely actors: we played our part and so did he - and he often did so brilliantly.

Perhaps understandably, in his incarnation as top cop, he receded from the camera's glare, and retreated from the frontline, so much so that we kind of forgot how much fun he was! And so, it's worthwhile to look back - we promise for the last time, at his mad and manic days on the frontline. To do so we reprise a sort of video essay we first put together in 2009:...

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 high-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."
Jules Vasquez to Jeffries: "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, cool and deadly.

Jeffries will now reportedly take up a Senior Position at the Ministry of Transport.

And before we go tonight: one correction to a story we ran on Friday: we said: The girls from Holy Rangers Primary school in the Stann Creek district took home the championship trophy, that should have been Holy Angels School from the Stann Creek District.