A No-case Result In A Case Brought By INDECOM Is Not The Same As A Case Brought By The Police

Terrence Williams

There is a seri­ous con­ver­sa­tion to be had about the false sense of secu­ri­ty and brain­wash­ing Jamaicans are lulled into. An anti-police mind­set which cre­ates the per­cep­tion that an agency that was cre­at­ed to harass the police is in their best inter­est.
Just today threats were made by gangs that peo­ple in the once qui­et town of Mandeville will be slaugh­tered one each day if a gang­ster arrest­ed by the police is not released forth­with.
When the fake lay­ers of peace and con­tent­ment are peeled away Jamaica has a very seri­ous prob­lem with crim­i­nals and it is not get­ting bet­ter.

When a case which is brought by the police gets dis­missed by the courts for want of pros­e­cu­tion it is not the same as a case in which a police offi­cer was charged for a crime and walked free because the pros­e­cu­tion can­not sub­stan­ti­ate the case it brought.
The Jamaica Constabulary Force is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing crimes which involve 2.8 mil­lion Jamaicans and every sin­gle for­eign­er who ever set foot not just on Jamaican soil but may have com­mit­ted a crime against our coun­try 12 miles away from our coun­try’s shores.
As an over­sight agency INDECOM is tasked with inves­ti­gat­ing a secu­ri­ty appa­ra­tus of approx­i­mate­ly 12,000 peo­ple not count­ing the Corrections Department.
Most alle­ga­tions against the secu­ri­ty forces were, and still, are forced by gang lead­ers, or as they were called (area lead­ers). Common lowlife scum­bags, san­i­tized, pack­aged and sold to the Jamaican peo­ple by what pass­es for a media.
Fake mourn­ers became the norm, wail­ing away at the sup­posed killings of their choir­boy friends whom they watched get­ting mur­dered by the police as he slept in his bed at 3 in the morning.[sic]
Innocent com­mu­ni­ty lead­ers, or as one anti-police agi­ta­tor Horace Levy labeled them, (cor­ner crews) not dan­ger­ous gang­sters.
That is not to say that the break­down in the nation’s social order and the neglect of the police over a peri­od of sev­er­al decades has­n’t result­ed in many peo­ple who should nev­er be police offi­cers becom­ing police offi­cers.
As a con­se­quence, the poor qual­i­ty of those can­di­dates nat­u­ral­ly end­ed up in out­comes which are anti­thet­i­cal to a good police depart­ment and the good of the coun­try overall.


On the 7th of this month Detective Corporal Kevin Adams, Constable Carl Bucknor, and District Constable Howard Brown had their 8‑year night­mare come to a spec­tac­u­lar end when Queen’s Counsel Caroline Hay told the court, the pros­e­cu­tion would be unable to negate the defense’s posi­tion of self-defense. 
The three police offi­cers were charged with the mur­der of Andrew Bisson in a police oper­a­tion on September 5, 2011.
The Investigations were under­tak­en and con­duct­ed by INDECOM.
During the tri­al the judge, Chief Justice Byran Sykes spoke to the grave reser­va­tions he had about the case against the offi­cers.
Justice Sykes observed (1) [ that it seemed that the accused offi­cers were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
(2) Chief Justice Bryan Sykes, the tri­al judge expressed con­cern about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion?

On Tuesday, January 22nd, 2019 Sergeant David Hutchinson and Constable Kenneth Daley were before the very same Judge Bryan Sykes. The two were charged with mur­der in a July 2013 inci­dent fol­low­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion by INDECOM into the fatal shoot­ing of a teenag­er, Derrick Bolton, and anoth­er man.
Like the case on January 7th, pros­e­cu­tors told the court that they could not pro­ceed against the accused as they could not pro­duce the pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness­es.
The offi­cers were charged after 8 peo­ple were fatal­ly shot in an area of Saint Catherine and the police respond­ed and con­front­ed the two, who were report­ed­ly mem­bers of the noto­ri­ous Klansman gang.

The com­mon inves­tiga­tive thread in these two most recent cas­es in which offi­cers who have been charged with mur­der and have spent years await­ing tri­al, in some cas­es while locked away like com­mon crim­i­nals is INDECOM.
In response to charges by police offi­cers that INDECOM was charge ‑hap­py and was charg­ing offi­cers then doing inves­ti­ga­tions, Terrence Williams the head of the agency in 2016 sought to debunk claims he and his agency were abus­ing the pow­ers giv­en to the agency.
He argued that the com­mis­sion’s oper­a­tions does not allow for charges to be laid with­out prop­er inves­ti­ga­tions being car­ried out.
“The INDECOM Act oper­ates in a way that before any­body can be charged, it must come through the direc­tor of com­plaints and then be seen by me.

The design of the INDECOM Act is to ensure that all inves­ti­ga­tions are super­vised by some­body with senior legal qual­i­fi­ca­tion and expe­ri­ence. So the com­plaint that is being made is com­plete­ly off the mark, based on sys­tems. Further, it is not our prac­tice to charge per­sons before the case is com­plet­ed, Williams told the Gleaner at the time.
So much for adher­ing to the dic­tates of the law!

In 2016 Terrence Williams told the same news­pa­per that
“of the six cas­es that have been com­plet­ed, mean­ing cas­es placed before the courts since the cre­ation of the agency in 2008, only one per­son was acquit­ted, and there is one where the DPP felt the case should not go on. We have five cas­es where there have been con­vic­tions, includ­ing one case with eight peo­ple.”
Only that there was no truth to Terrence Williams’ state­ments.
In Manchester, INDECOM charged a police offi­cer with using his hel­met to hit a man.
Case dis­missed.
Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Jason Anderson, who is assigned to the Major Organised Crime and Anti-Corruption Agency (MOCA), has been charged with dis­charg­ing a firearm with­in 40 yards of a pub­lic road, con­trary to Section 23 of the Firearms Act and assault at com­mon law. Charged by INDECOM.
Case dis­missed.
There are oth­er cas­es that have also result­ed in dis­missals all of which are cas­es brought against the police by INDECOM.

Hamish Campbell


The aver­age Jamaican has been raised, schooled and indoc­tri­nat­ed into hat­ing law enforce­ment. Even some who have worked as police offi­cers because they may have been unable to get jobs in the pri­vate econ­o­my has been known to be vehe­ment­ly against the very dis­ci­pline which puts food on their table.
The ques­tion of hav­ing cops opposed to the rule of law is cer­tain­ly more per­va­sive now than it was before.
With so many peo­ple enter­ing the depart­ment from the left-lean­ing University of the West Indies the prob­lem is now a seri­ous threat to the nation’s secu­ri­ty.
Enemies of polic­ing now doing polic­ing.
It can­not be overem­pha­sized that nei­ther of the two major polit­i­cal par­ties wants a com­pe­tent police depart­ment which is capa­ble of doing the type of inves­tiga­tive work which would have end­ed in the arrest of politi­cians involved in the Petrojam scam, Outameani, the Iran sug­ar deal, the Cuban light­bulb scan­dal, and the host of oth­er thefts in which bil­lions of dol­lars sim­ply dis­ap­peared.
That is why INDECOM serves the inter­est of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
That is the rea­son they do not care that Deputy Commissioner of INDECOM British trans­plant Hamish Campbell was alleged to have plant­ed evi­dence on an inno­cent black man while he worked in his home country.

No mat­ter how much you adore INDECOM and hate the police, it is pret­ty dif­fi­cult to ignore the obser­va­tions of the nations most senior jurist.
(1)That it seemed that the accused offi­cers were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
(2) Concerned about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion.
What is absent from this whole con­ver­sa­tion is a fair and just appre­ci­a­tion for the fact that these case are being approached and pros­e­cut­ed in a man­ner which is inju­ri­ous to police offi­cers and worse is dan­ger­ous to the nation’s secu­ri­ty.
Furthermore, the duplic­i­tous silence by what pass­es for an orga­nized media, or worse the fail­ure to put two and two togeth­er and report to the peo­ple the dan­ger they are in by allow­ing for the con­tin­u­a­tion of INDECOM
Because the sta­tus quo serves the inter­est of both polit­i­cal par­ties voic­es like mine will go unheed­ed.
Nevertheless, as the coun­try bounces from one dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion to anoth­er and as the gangs con­sol­i­date their pow­er, the peo­ple like sheep, are led to believe that the num­ber one prob­lem they face is threats to their human rights.
In the mean­time, Superintendent Wayné Cameron and his offi­cers are on high alert in Manchester, despite the forces arrayed against them this offi­cer and his men and women are deter­mined and vig­i­lant­ly out there pro­tect­ing the lives of the cit­i­zens with their own lives.
Undeterred by threats from gang­sters who would turn our beau­ti­ful Island into a Sub-Saharan waste­land, spilling inno­cent blood if their demands are not met.

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