Damion Crawford Continues Anti-INDECOM Campaign

Junior gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Damion Crawford, is con­tin­u­ing his cam­paign against the Independent Commission of Investigation, INDECOM.

This time he is accus­ing the enti­ty of only being inter­est­ed in pub­lic rela­tions while fail­ing to ful­fill its objec­tives. INDECOM was set up in 2010 to inves­ti­gate actions by mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces that result in death or injury to per­sons or the abuse of the rights of per­sons. However, in a series of social media out­bursts in recent weeks, Crawford has attacked the agency and the author­i­ties for alleged­ly only being inter­est­ed in pub­lic rela­tions. In a post on Twitter today, the East Rural St Andrew MP said INDECOM has been in the news fre­quent­ly but not in rela­tion to the con­vic­tion of bad cops. He says either there are only a few bad cops in Jamaica or INDECOM is incom­pe­tent, adding that per­for­mance is being sac­ri­ficed for pub­lic rela­tions. In a post last week Tuesday, Crawford, the Junior Minister in the Tourism and Entertainment Ministry, said the renew­al of Terrence Williams’ con­tract as head of INDECOM proves to him, that pub­lic rela­tions is more impor­tant than per­for­mance. Last Monday, Williams was sworn in for a sec­ond five-year term as com­mis­sion­er of the over­sight body.

In 2013, Crawford called for the clo­sure of INDECOM claim­ing that the enti­ty had failed to meet its objec­tives. Legislators are dis­cussing whether to estab­lish an over­sight body for INDECOM, with some crit­ics say­ing the inves­tiga­tive body has been ham­per­ing police efforts to catch crim­i­nals. INDECOM has claimed a major role for the approx­i­mate­ly 50 per­cent fall in police-relat­ed killings in 2014 when com­pared to 2013. Read more here. .Damion Crawford Continues Anti-INDECOM Campaign