Peter Espeut | Do politicians want an end to police excesses?

We have short memories. For most of the last 40 years, the Jamaican security forces have had top world ranking in terms of killings per capita. In 2018, we had the fifth-highest rate of police killings in the world. In 2017 – just three years ago – Jamaica had the highest rate of police killings in the world!

This phenomenon has persisted for decades across both PNP and JLP governments, and therefore must be considered part of the culture of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) – and the political directorate in whose name they operate.

I have been writing about extrajudicial police killings for almost 30 years in this column – through the tenure of many national security ministers, including K.D. Knight, Peter Phillips, Peter Bunting, Bobby Montague, and Horace Chang; on their watch, Jamaican police killings were of world-beating standards. I think that these have been dark decades for the Jamaica Constabulary Force, and for their masters in the political directorate.

Most poor Jamaicans fear the police and their use of excessive force; accounts abound of home invasions, and police killings in improbable ‘shoot-outs’. The body count over the decades is high, and includes the mentally challenged Michael Gayle in 1999, the Braeton Seven in 2001, Frederick ‘Mikey’ Hill in Negril in 2010, Kavorn Shue on Jarrett Lane in 2012, Sheldon ‘Junior Biggs’ Daley in 2019; my editor does not give me enough space to continue the list.

Contaminating scenes

The police are in the habit of contaminating the scenes of police shootings – including removing spent shells and bodies from incident scenes before authorised personnel arrive – which make it difficult for forensic investigations into the incidents to come to a conclusion. I have never heard of a policeman disciplined for contaminating a crime scene.

For a fact: despite eyewitness and video evidence, the Jamaican justice system has been unable to convict many policemen of murder or of extrajudicial killings. Efforts to bring murderous policemen to justice have led to the creation of at least four investigative bodies – so far.

The old police complaints department at 34 Duke Street never seemed to be able to find any evidence to even charge policemen for murder. I suppose the old maxim is still true: ‘Police cannot investigate police’. The ‘squaddie mentality’ determines that policemen cannot be objective when it comes to dealing with their own. It certainly was not ‘independent’.

FORMATION of PPCA

And so in 1993 the government created the Police Public Complaints Authority (PPCA), a body outside the JCF to investigate JCF members. It had a little investigative capability, but had to rely on JCF detectives to do much of its investigation. The government of the day, sympathetic to the police, set up a body they should have known could not work. It was toothless, compromised by its incestuous relationship with the very body it was set up to investigate. The ‘squaddie mentality’ trumped external oversight, and in the end it was not ‘independent’.

As the number of police killings increased, and in the face of increased criticism, in late 1997 the JCF set up within their own ranks the Bureau of Special Investigations to investigate JCF excesses. It did not even pretend to be an independent body, and failed to find evidence against many policemen. ‘Police cannot investigate police’.

And in 2009 the government set up INDECOM – the Independent Commission of Investigations – independent of the JCF, to try to bring to justice any murderers within the ranks of the police who have been benefiting from the lack of ability of the Force to investigate itself.

The Judicial Committee of the UK Privy Council has now revealed that PNP and JLP lawmakers did not give INDECOM the powers to arrest, charge, and prosecute police suspected of excesses; they only have powers of investigation, after which they have to turn the cases over to the same agents and agencies who have failed over the years to bring prosecutions against police wrongdoers.

All along we have wondered: do politicians of all stripes really want police excesses to come to an end? Or do the security forces really kill in their names?

The politicians have deceived us! Now we know that INDECOM is no better than the toothless agencies they set up before. The conclusion is inescapable: neither the PNP nor the JLP really want police excesses to end.

A pox on both your houses!

Peter Espeut is an environmentalist and development scientist. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com