Orville Taylor | Suspicious INDECOM

Now that Croatia has effectively ‘bread bagged’ the Samba dancers, Jamaica really needs new heroes and the best place to look is internally. Cameroon had dropped a Bob Marley ‘one-love’ on December 2, telling us that we need to acknowledge ourselves and stop thinking that if someone from foreign says or does something, it’s better.

Yet, this self-deprecating view we have as Jamaicans pervades so many other elements of our lives. On Thursday, Radio Jamaica’s Hotline hosted a forum put on by the Jamaica Accountability Meter Portal (JAMP). Brainchild of a little black woman, Jeanette Calder, it presents another level of scrutiny over our governance. Still impressed by its potential, JAMP allows us to look at a range of elements, including tracking contracts, government promises and many other things which it needs to take out an advertisement to publicise. Supported financially and administratively by the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica (PSOJ) and the European Union, JAMP has even elicited support from the British government, our former colonial masters.

Then it struck me. How many countries have the levels of scrutiny that Jamaica has? We have a robust democracy, with the freest press in the Anglophone world. Indeed, a prime minister cannot become a dictator, despite how many letters he might have in the beginning. He has no power to initiate investigations or police operations, except in an abnormal state of public emergency, and in declaring and maintaining same, he needs support from the Opposition. Beyond the free and fair elections, we have a Public Defender, Auditor General, a Judiciary that is not subject to electoral politics, and an Integrity Commission. Add to that National Integrity Action, Police Civilian Oversight Authority and myriad internal checks and balances in the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), and will the narrative of ‘impunity’ can only be carried by the most pusillanimous of speakers.

Neither the UK nor the USA has the equivalent of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), which reports to Parliament. In its last report, it revealed that 127 civilians were killed by the security forces between July 1, 2020 and June 30, 2021. This is significantly lower than the average of more than 200 before the Terrence Williams-headed INDECOM started operations in 2011. In the majority of those cases, despite some misgivings, there has been no recommendation of punitive action, either internally or externally.

WONDERFUL ENTITY

INDECOM is a wonderful entity, which has, irrespective of what the police, human rights activists or expatriates think, operate according to the rule of law and evidence. That it can publish data about police killings is amazing. Furthermore, without the cooperation of the commissioner of police, it can act to bring criminal or otherwise deviant cops to book.

Jamaica is a country with the highest homicide rate in the English-speaking world, and its police officers have one of the highest rates of police being killed by criminals. Seven officers have been murdered this year. Doesn’t it make sense, though, that in a country with an above-average killing of police officers and citizens by criminals, the police would correspondingly kill more who attempt to engage them? I am not sure what level of qualification the accented INDECOM spokesman has, but any of my undergraduate students in social research would understand the correlation or association even without using Chi Square.

In its report and in the electronic media, it hand-pick some American populations based on its perceived similarity. Yet, here is an interesting fact. American police are not under the same obligation to collect or publish police killing as we are. Thus the data are ‘suspected’ to be highly under-reported. Second, the number of killings by the police is totally useless unless juxtaposed against the number of attacks against police and tempered by the homicide rate.

Here is a fact. Over the last two decades, American police across all states killed civilians at the ratio of 1:17 for each police officer killed by criminals. For Jamaican police, the ratio is identical. Yet Jamaican police are killed around 10 times the national average murder rate, while American cops are killed around 1.5 times their national homicide rate.

Finally, it is very noisome that somehow, the lack of evidence for prosecution seems to be a concern. It is extremely dangerous ground when any entity wishes to act ‘extrajudicially’, simply because it considers something ‘suspicious’ or alarming. Criminal ‘suspects’ in the same type of justice in the America and the UK are charged and prosecuted using a basic standard of evidence. Police cannot be held to a lower standard.

Where it finds credible evidence of misconduct or criminal behaviour, INDECOM must act. If there is none, it should desist and leave the innuendoes to the less trained. Indeed, it is bad enough that government is suggesting taking away people’s rights based on suspicions. Just imagine if those very agents who are being empowered to detain based on suspicion are themselves made to undergo the same treatment by INDECOM…

Well then again, might be poetic justice … Ehh!

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer at the Department of Sociology at The University of the West Indies, a radio talk-show host, and author of ‘Broken Promises, Hearts and Pockets’. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.