INDECOM emancipated

Orville Taylor

If the week before last's ruling from the learned high court judge killed the police's vibes, then the judgment last Tuesday must be causing them to clench their teeth.

In their wisdom, three high court justices decided that the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) does have the power, in certain circumstances, to arrest and charge members of the security forces who, in its opinion, have violated the law in exercise of the powers which the State has vested in them.

It is an emancipation of sorts, because the view was held that despite the first name in its title, INDECOM did not have the power of arrest without the rubber stamp of the director of public prosecutions (DPP).

Apart from being an encumbrance, the need for recourse to the DPP would have made a mockery of the role of the commissioner, especially since he, being a lawyer of at least equal stature as she, would have simply been her subordinate. The ruling prompts me to re-christen the commission, replacing the word 'independent' with 'emancipated'.

Furthermore, given their stand-offs and at least two cases in which the DPP has proceeded in a direction which only she, in her wisdom, seemed to understand, 'EMANCICOM' is exactly what the judicial system needs.

Nevertheless, although a judicial determination was necessary to put the matter to rest, it was not the sort of case I believe should have even been put to the high court, because, given what the Police High Command, Jamaica Police Federation, the Special Constabulary Force Association, the officer corps of both, and the United District Constables Association all stand for, the cops honestly had nothing to fear.

After all, the official doctrine and stance of all of the foregoing is zero-tolerance of corruption and impropriety. On the surface, and fuelled by the media and 'police-ophobes', it did appear that the cops had something to hide, because, there were battles over who had control over crime scenes, the lack of speed with which the reports were sent from the police to INDECOM, and overall lack of cooperation.

Now, let us emancipate ourselves from the deceptions. There are, indeed, cases where police murder innocent people, and even those who are criminals, but were not carrying out criminal acts when they were killed. Thus, many times, the persons killed were out on bail, suspected of other crimes, had their names linked to other heinous activities, or were scourges on the community. And in such cases, the community, at large, breathes a sigh of relief and even cheers the cop executioners.

However, in the myriad cases when the community protests, the police sometimes get 'the wrong man'. Come on! Statistically, there must be some percentage of scenarios where the police use deadly force and the use-of-force policy is not followed.

COMMON MISCONCEPTION

Still, there is a level of irresponsibility in media and among the do-gooders when they refer to all fatal shootings by the police as extrajudicial killings. Simply put, this means that the police disregard the law and police procedure and murder suspects, even if the world 'knows' that they are guilty.

The fact is, the only basis for a person to be killed by state agents is if he is presenting a threat to others, or a court has convicted him of a capital crime. Thus, vigilante policemen and women who execute persons whom they feel are worthy of death are criminals themselves; and the force does have a number of them. We need to weed them out.

Nonetheless, EMANCICOM's commissioner, Terrence Williams, admitted that of the more than 200 cases investigated, 'a minority' of those were deemed to be worthy of prosecution. Therefore, the term, 'extrajudicial killing' is even more misleading than the word 'homophobia', which is used to falsely stigmatise all Jamaicans who do not embrace male-male intercourse.

This suggests that the cops and Williams were always generally on the same page, if the egos could be lowered to allow them to see eye to eye instead of 'I' to 'I'. While any illegal police killing is too many, the statistics which broadly paint them as police murders 'astigmatises' the observers because it is a cockeyed and visually impaired version of the data.

More than 175 years after Emancipation, and 148 years after the Morant Bay Rebellion, which led to a redefinition of the constabulary, there is still too much divisiveness in the judicial system, with the police becoming the fall guys simply because they are on the front line. The police get a raw deal because of the conduct of a minority of its members despite, perhaps, doing more to clean themselves than any of the other arms of the system.

In the past three years, an average 60 police personnel per year have been arrested by the Anti-Corruption Branch, with around two-thirds being charged criminally, and more than 230 have been removed from the force by administrative means. With the recent report from Transparency International that showed 12 per cent of corrupt Jamaicans declaring that they have paid bribes to cops, the numbers are encouraging.

Whatever happens in the ongoing trial of Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) James Forbes, the silver lining is that a very senior member of the constabulary was charged; demonstrating the fact that no one in the senior ranks is king, despite the insignia he or she wears.

One will also recall that another 'supe', Harry Daley, was convicted on corruption charges in 2009. Never mind that it was felt that he was eventually acquitted on appeal because the prosecution had 'bungled' the case, it was not the police who freed him.

One will also recall that in 2005, SSP Reneto de Cordova Valentino 'Reinstatement' Adams and a number of his colleagues were found not guilty of murder in what was widely publicised within the press and among human-rights lobby groups as 'extrajudicial' killings. Adams et al were released by a jury of peers - Jamaicans who also exonerated the 'Irreverend' Paul Lewis, who, despite imposing DNA evidence, walked scot-free from his sexual perversion charges.

NOT A MATTER OF CORRUPTION

Such are the vagaries of the justice system, and they have nothing to do with lack of police vigilance in bringing their own to justice. Remember, for corruption to take place, civilians and ordinary citizens have to pay the police, judge, or others, and lawyers have to facilitate some of it.

Interestingly, one of the exonerated cops who was charged with Adams became the Jamaica Constabulary Force's poster boy, the LASCO Top Cop. More ironically, a subsequent winner of the award is now facing the courts on rape charges. Not amusingly, a former employee of INDECOM is before the courts on drug charges, indicating, as I said last week, that no one in the entire justice system is beyond reproach.

Yet, despite these negatives, we generally can operate in this system without any need for recourse to bribery or other illegal activities. If this were a country with runaway corruption and lawlessness, the place would be in anarchy. True, our homicide rate is unacceptably high, but on the whole, the system works.

I live in the country with the freest press in the Americas. I celebrate my Emancipendence with all Jamaicans. Out of many, one proud black man.

Dr Orville Taylor is senior lecturer in sociology at the UWI and a radio talk-show host. Email feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com and tayloronblackline@hotmail.com.