Editorial | Police, polls and body-cams

If he has reviewed recent polling data on citizens’ perception about this year’s rise in police killings, as well as how safe they feel in their communities, Police Chief Kevin Blake is probably inclined to revise his strategy for a full roll-out of body-worn cameras (BWC) for the constabulary.

First, Dr Blake might now consider it crucial that the police rapidly accelerate their build-out of the backbone infrastructure that is necessary for the storage and management of data captured by body cams. He might now also agree that it would be a better tactic to assign the body-worn cameras the constabulary already owns to those officers who go on planned operations, and to those whose engagement with the public has the highest probability for violence.

The findings of the recent Don Anderson poll for the RJRGLEANER Group show that a plurality (45.6 per cent) of Jamaicans are uneasy to sceptical over the steep upward spiral in police fatal shootings so far this year. People with these concerns are approximately 14 percentage points higher than those citizens (31.7 per cent) who feel that the rise in police killings is justified.

Another important bit of data, to which Dr Blake has no doubt paid attention, suggests that despite a plunge in criminal homicides, Jamaicans remain ambivalent about the effectiveness of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) to address crime.

FEEL LESS SAFE

Indeed, according to Don Anderson’s findings, more people (59.8 per cent) now say that they feel less safe in their communities than five years ago, when only three in 10 Jamaica (32.7 per cent) said they felt unsafe where they lived.

Up to June 24, Jamaica’s security forces killed 160 citizens, almost all by the police. This compared with 67 for the entire first six months of 2024. That’s 93 more, or a 139 per cent rise in fatal shootings.

At the same time Jamaica, up to June 21, recorded 322 murders, a 43 per cent reduction compared to the same period last year. This decline is a follow-on from 2024 when murders fell by 18 per cent, to 1,141.

This newspaper hopes that the trend continues and is locked-in for the long-term. This is why the overwhelming majority of Jamaicans wish to embrace the JCF as an institution that commands their trust and why some people read into the poll results a proxy of those sentiments.

Indeed, there has been deep concern among rights activists and ordinary regular citizens, at this year’s rise in police killings, continuing a trend of the last two years, after rises of 34 per cent and 18 per cent, respectively, in 2024, and 2023.

The police and government spokesmen insist that these rises merely reflect an increasing willingness of brazen gunmen to confront the cops, and have argued that the focus of rights groups is misplaced.

However, INDECOM, the agency that investigates police shootings and complaints of abuse against the security forces, consistently laments the absence of video images from any fatal shootings involving the JCF. This, the police say, will happen with the expansion of their digital network, but have given no timelines.

EXPERIMENTING

The police have been experimenting with the use of body-worn cameras for a dozen years. The JCF says that the cameras it has are assigned to cops who work in public order control.

However, rights groups, as have INDECOM, point out that over 40 per cent of the police’s fatal shootings happen during planned operations, which they ought to be better able to control.

The public appears to be sympathetic to some of those concerns, giving the aggregate figure in the Don Anderson survey of people with unease about the rise in fatal shootings. These range from the views that the numbers are excessive (21 per cent); the police need to be more accountable (6.7 per cent); that too many innocent people are killed (5.2 per cent); to the need for better training (1.4 per cent).

Among people who don’t share these concerns over the rise in fatal shootings, the largest group (14.1 per cent) say the police are doing their jobs, followed by a view that they are “getting rid of criminals (12.1 per cent) and that such killings are sometimes necessary (3.7 per cent).

Given the polarising impact of this matter, and the JCF’s insistence that its officers behave legally and ethically, the use of body cams should be an urgent priority.