Letter of the Day | Put radical police reform on agenda

THE EDITOR, Madam:

INDECOM’s latest report citing a number of policemen involved in many fatal shootings should shock us into facing reality and give us the impetus to cleanse the constabulary.

In 2016, it identified 11 such cops, one of whom has since been acquitted, one convicted, while the rest (two in custody) await trial. That same year, the West Kingston Commission of Enquiry called for a “radical” reform of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

We should have been stunned by the even more shocking response to INDECOM that Commissioner of Police Antony Anderson then gave us. Jamaica took that in calm stride, too, with no visible sign of alarm.

Anderson just brushed aside INDECOM’s report, calling it “dishonest”. And why? “Far more people,” he has argued, “are shot [but] I haven’t heard our Independent Commission say that there was one justified shooting ... . The police are cleared in the majority of cases investigated by INDECOM, but this is not highlighted.”

Really, this is a disingenuous, worthless argument.

Clearly, questions must arise about the 14 cops responsible for 30 of the 129 fatal shootings over the 12 months ending June 2021. Many JCF members have a record of previous killings but, for want of evidence, have not all been charged with criminal conduct.

The police commissioner’s attempt to justify the high number of killings by Jamaican police can’t be right. Police violence encourages civilian violence.

Jamaica’s police fatality record puts it among the world’s worst offenders. As for not ‘highlighting’ good police action, let him or the media do that from the data that INDECOM simply supplies to Parliament quarterly. That is INDECOM’s job: by its impartial investigations, to protect civilians from unjust police action and to clear police unjustly accused of wrongdoing.

As even Anderson admits, hundreds of police are cleared every year by INDECOM – as against the handful found guilty of wrongful conduct against civilians.

Then there is the fact that Anderson said not a word about the 36 civilians without guns killed by the police, 19 of them without any weapon at all; nothing about the huge number of bullets fired by police over the 12 months – 3,871, of which 1,950 killed the 129 (Chicago police, in six years, used 2,623 rounds). There is also nothing from him about the 12 mentally ill also, by media reports, killed by the police. Does he not care about the people who the police are supposed to protect, that he defends his men no matter what they do?

The full implication of Anderson getting away with this kind of response to INDECOM must be keenly appreciated. He may well have the backing of the prime minister and Local Government Minister Desmond McKenzie.

Anderson is not the man for the transformation of the JCF, the truly radical reform called for by two national commissions (1992, 2016) and two national committees (1996, 2002).

HORACE LEVY