EDITORIAL - Building police-community relations in Tivoli

Given the history of poor relations between law enforcement and the residents of Tivoli Gardens, we are not surprised by claims of abuse against the security forces during last week's necessary incursion into the west Kingston community to neutralise and dismantle the command and control apparatus of reputed drug kingpin, Christopher 'Dudus' Coke.

While some of the allegations of excesses may be credible, we suspect that many are exaggerated, reflective of the loyalty some Tivolites maintain for the fugitive, Mr Coke, and the distrust the police, in particular, enjoy in many poor communities.

It is clear that the new boss of the constabulary, Mr Owen Ellington, has a big job of rebuilding confidence in, and the credibility of, his organisation. It will not be easy, but the police commissioner may have taken a small, but important, step towards this in Tivoli Gardens, where 73 people were killed in the fight between the security forces and Christopher Coke's militia.

He has pledged to investigate all allegations of misconduct by the security forces during the west Kingston operation, and is giving effect to this by establishing a complaints office in the community.

Public defender's mandate

This effort is separate from the initiative of the public defender, whose mandate is to investigate and, if necessary, seek redress on behalf of citizens whose constitutional rights have been infringed by the State.

It is important that the Bureau of Special Investigations, the arm of the police that probes fatal shootings by the security forces, its heavy workload notwithstanding, treats its Tivoli Gardens assignment as priority.

For too long, Tivoli Gardens, a community most representative of the 'garrison' structure that bedevils Jamaica's politics, is operated as if it was outside the national territory. Paradoxically, the community was the political heartland of the ruling Jamaica Labour Party, represented in Parliament by the party's two most recent leaders, who also served as prime ministers. Especially under Coke's influence, Tivoli Gardens was something of a state within a state. It is imperative that the community is reintegrated into Jamaica.

Held accountable

Monday's rescheduling of post-mortem examinations of the Tivoli Gardens dead to allow for independent pathologists to arrive from abroad to observe the autopsies is another small process which suggests that security forces are being held to standards of accountability. This will help in building trust and contribute to the hoped-for re-engagement of the community.

This is, therefore, a good thing. Families who may lack faith in government pathologists now have greater certainty that, with this oversight, professionalism will be maintained, lessening the likelihood of cover-up or misconduct by the security forces.

These are merely small steps in the Tivoli Gardens rebuilding process, but important ones. For a long time, the people of that community have known only, and become accustomed to, authoritarian enforcement, rather than civil policing and justice, which rests on a compact between a community and the justice system.

A community and its members agree to allow themselves to be policed and to follow the rules on the assumption that, in the event of allegations that laws have been breached, the process will operate with fairness and an absence of impunity. That is what the constabulary has to now demonstrate is possible in Tivoli Gardens.

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