Editorial | Liberate the PCOA

While Professor Anthony Harriott is probably right in suggesting that a single oversight agency would be more efficient at promoting accountability in Jamaica’s police force, the existing bodies are not without leverage, especially if they work in tandem to get the job done. More specifically, there should be a greater sharing of information between them, if that is not already the case.

In that regard, this newspaper places special focus on the Police Civilian Oversight Authority (PCOA), a mostly too quiet, and seemingly timid, organisation which has significant but underutilised powers. A recent stir by its CEO, Otarah Byfield, provided a hint of what is possible, and raised hopes that things might change.

It is common ground that Jamaica has a corrupt and largely ineffective constabulary, whose members regularly behave with impunity, even if less aggressively so now than, say, a decade ago. It is also a widely held perception that venality and misconduct are not confined to the forces’ lower ranks, and that the institution is sternly resistant to change.

There are three primary oversight bodies for the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). The oldest, and constitutionally enshrined, is the Police Service Commission (PSC). Its responsibility is the promotion, engagement and disciplining of senior police officers. Until three years ago the PSC, although it is not an investigative agency, carried out that function without inputs from anyone else, but for the information contained in the personnel files of the officers under its scrutiny.

However, in 2019, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, Jamaica’s UK-based final court, ruled in a case involving a former senior superintendent of police (SSP), Delroy Hewitt, that the PSC had an obligation to consider the human-rights records of people whose promotions on which it deliberated. Years earlier, the rights group Jamaicans for Justice, dissatisfied with the PSC’s approach to SSP Hewitt’s elevation, took the PSC to court on the matter. The Privy Council tapped the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) as the agency on which the PSC could rely on for its investigations.

MOST RESPECTED

Established in 2010 – after the JCF could not impartially investigate complaints of misconduct against its members, and the failure of previous independent agencies to do the job adequately, INDECOM is now the best known – and the most respected – of the oversight bodies. That, in part, is due to its robust efforts to hold members of the security forces to account for alleged abuses. It is also because it tends to be transparent and vocal about its actions.

Indeed, in 2010, the year of INDECOM’s launch, Jamaica’s security forces shot dead 277 people. Last year, that number was 127. It previously fell to as low as 84 in 2019.

INDECOM, however, does not always get compliance. Last month, for example, its boss, Hugh Faulker, disclosed that in the three and half years up to last June, the commission filed 80 reports with the JCF, including recommending disciplinary hearings against 108 officers. Up to the time Mr Faulkner spoke, none of these hearings had been held, and the JCF had not formally told INDECOM of its decisions on any of the matters, as is required by law. The police was similarly blasé with respect to the cases of 138 officers filed between 2010 and 2017.

At least, though, INDECOM’s concern was not whispered to the leadership of the JCF. Neither was it the subject of some confidential letter. In keeping with a culture established by his predecessor, Terrence Williams, Mr Faulkner spoke publicly about it. Indeed, INDECOM regularly places information about its activities on its website as well as files periodic reports to Parliament.

BUILD PRESSURE FOR CHANGE

This kind of transparency helps to build pressure for change. It is an approach we recommend to the PCOA. The PCOA’s job is to monitor the implementation of policy by the JCF, and also to measure the performance of the constabulary against internationally accepted standards. It has the power to inspect the facilities and records of the JCF, and to require police officers to attend its reviews and provide information. It has, however, complained that there are no sanctions when the police do not comply.

Yet, even the PCOA’s spare documents provide useful information with which to draw conclusions about the efficiency and management of the JCF. For instance, in its 2014-2015 annual report, tabled in Parliament in 2019, the authority noted that of 1,549 cases reviewed by its inspectors, a third (519) indicated “little or no evidence of case work”.

Said the authority: “The assessment revealed that there is a significant concern regarding the supervision and management of cases within the JCF. At least 50 per cent of the cases … showed major deficiencies in relation to consistent and systematic supervision that would allow for critical advance in the work to be delivered on these files.”

As with an officer’s human-rights record, the PCOA’s inspection reports of areas where candidates for promotion are senior or commanding officers should be available for consideration by the PSC in arriving at its decisions. That would help to prevent the incompetent, the ne’er-do-well and those with stakes in poor outcomes from making it to the top, or close thereto.

Further, the PCOA should conduct far more and deeper inspections of the department and divisions of the JCF, and also engage in regular conversations with the people who the reports really impact, and to whom they belong – the citizens of Jamaica.

In November, its CEO, unusually for that agency, publicly highlighted a raft of basic things that the JCF failed to do that are important for accountability. We hope that such conversations will be ongoing, not to embarrass the JCF, but for it to do better. Indeed, there are few better motivators than transparency.