INDECOM’s Abuse Of Power Clear As Day In This Case

For as long as INDECOM has exist­ed I have called for the repeal of the law and if nec­es­sary a com­pre­hen­sive review of the prin­ci­ples which neces­si­tat­ed the law in the first place with the view to the pas­sage of a bet­ter law.

The sup­port­ers of INDECOM are vehe­ment­ly opposed to any­one touch­ing the law regard­less of the harm it is caus­ing. Those sup­port­ers range from inside Jamaica House to PNP HQ and places beyond.
The ques­tion which must be asked then is, why are they opposed to a com­pre­hen­sive top to bot­tom review of the law?
If the law is right­eous it will stand any scruti­ny so there is noth­ing to fear.

The fact of the mat­ter is that sup­port­ers of the law know full well that the law is bad. Aspects of the law may even be uncon­sti­tu­tion­al but they would rather keep a bad law in place which injuries police offi­cers than do the work to change it.
One of the talk­ing points used by pro­po­nents of the law is that if offi­cers act appro­pri­ate­ly they have noth­ing to fear from hav­ing INDECOM there.
Many peo­ple out­side the cir­cle of pow­er of pol­i­tics and law enforce­ment who sim­ply want checks and bal­ances in the sys­tem fall vic­tim to this lie because they do not under­stand the minu­tia of how a bad law like INDECOM may have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for offi­cers who do exact­ly what they are sup­posed to do and are crim­i­nal­ized by a law which should nev­er have been autho­rized in its present state.

The instances of the abuse of INDECOM are many the lat­est being the case of assault INDECOM brought against Corporal Delroy McDuffus and Constable Adrian Beckford, who was attached to the Morant Bay Police Station six years ago. McDuffus and Beckford were arrest­ed and charged by INDECOM for alleged­ly assault­ing a man dur­ing a road­block that was mount­ed by res­i­dents in the Whitehorse com­mu­ni­ty in the parish.The com­plainant was arrest­ed by the police after he was report­ed­ly seen block­ing the road­way and was ordered to move away from the scene but refused and resist­ed the police’s attempt to remove him.

This case should nev­er have been brought in the first place, there was no evi­dence out­side the com­plainan­t’s words to go by.
Point num­ber one is that he was arrest­ed for refus­ing to move away from the scene after he was caught block­ing a pub­lic thoroughfare.
If he refused the police com­mand to do as he was told why would we not believe he had to be forcibly sub­dued by the police in order to effect the arrest?
It is exact­ly because of abus­es of this nature that I am allud­ing to when I crit­i­cize the INDECOM law as a flawed law entrust­ed to a dem­a­gogue to execute.
Additionally, the police can­not sue INDECOM for wrong­ful arrest even when they act with haste, with­out due-care, a lack of cau­tion and maybe mal­ice as is seem­ing­ly the case here.
Police offi­cers are sued for doing exact­ly what they are tasked with doing and are being arrest­ed and treat­ed as crim­i­nals for doing so. INDECOM faces no legal jeop­ardy for abus­ing it’s powers.

If police offi­cers are unnec­es­sar­i­ly rough or abu­sive to a sus­pect they are arrest­ing, offi­cers involved in the arrest open them­selves up to legal jeopardy.
On the oth­er hand, police offi­cers have tremen­dous lee­way as it relates to use of force when they are mak­ing arrests.
For the record and for the edi­fi­ca­tion of those who opine on this sub­ject with­out objec­tiv­i­ty or the nec­es­sary knowl­edge, that lat­i­tude includes the pow­er to take life.

Regardless of the rea­son for the arrest if an offend­er fights with an offi­cer that offi­cer has the right under the law to use the force nec­es­sary to make the arrest. Without the ben­e­fit of video evi­dence which showed that offi­cers, in this case, act­ed against their oath in mak­ing the arrest the case brought against the offi­cers should nev­er have been brought.
Even with video evi­dence, it is incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult to argue with the force used by an offi­cer in the heat of arrest­ing a bel­liger­ent suspect.
After the sus­pect is cuffed, offi­cers are at much more legal expo­sure if alle­ga­tions of unnec­es­sary force are alleged.
That was not the case here,

On the basis of cas­es as these INDECOM is oper­at­ing with­out account­abil­i­ty a license to com­mit more egre­gious breach­es against offi­cers with­out any account­abil­i­ty or with­out incur­ring any penalty.
This law needs to go.