Indecom’s Own Numbers Reveal Real Facts,not Alternative Facts Williams Would Like To Push.…

No one should reasonably argue against the critical need for oversight of police in any jurisdiction. Lord knows certainly not of the Jamaica Constabulary Force.
With that said, the JCF has had it’s own share of internal oversight which has had great success. Their achilles heel being that they failed to make public what they were doing. This resulted in a prevailing narrative that the police weren’t held to account. Given enough time it became an alternative fact.

The JCF has had spe­cial Branch which has worked to root out dirty cops years ago.
Feeling that more was need­ed to be done to rein in bad police offi­cers spe­cial inter­est pres­sured the polit­i­cal pow­ers to do more .As a con­se­quence they cre­at­ed the (CCRB) The civil­ian com­plaint review board.
At any giv­en time Jamaicans have had one or more Agencies to which they could turn to make com­plaints against mem­bers of the police depart­ment and the Military.

Then the CCRB too became a vic­tim of out­side pres­sure and Bruce Golding gave the Country INDECOM. For the dura­tion of the life of the CCRB cer­tain inter­est groups engaged in a vis­cer­al pro­pa­gan­da assault against it argu­ing that it was not doing enough.
At the time I argued this was being done to dis­cred­it the Security forces , dem­a­gogue the CCRB with the ulti­mate goal of cre­at­ing anoth­er agency over which they had con­trol, and which would car­ry out their mandate.
INDECOM was born.

On the birth of INDECOM and the appoint­ment of Terrence Williams as it’s com­mis­sion­er I said this was not going to be police over­sight , it was going to be police persecution.
Immediately he was appoint­ed, Terrence Williams joined the most rad­i­cal most caus­tic voic­es against the police in a press conference.
They joined JFJ and oth­er anti-police groups to con­demn the police department.
The JCF cried foul and called for Williams to step down.
This was not like­ly to hap­pen, at the time INDECOM had pow­er­ful sup­port­ers who weren’t going to care about the con­cerns of law enforcement.

Now it’s impor­tant that when we con­sid­er the cre­ation of INDECOM we take into account that the new Agency INDECOM has not done a sin­gle thing out­side what the oth­er over­sight bod­ies have done to remove dirty cops.

Yet the noise from the cor­ners which has kept up the drum­beat for police over­sight have fall­en suspiciously,and death­ly silent, now that they have their own bunch of anti Police Elites con­trol­ling the process.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that despite their best efforts police offi­cers are nec­es­sar­i­ly going to have com­plaints against them even when they patrol with mem­bers of the Military.
Purely by the nature of their job which puts them into dai­ly con­tact with bel­liger­ent accused who break the laws, those con­tacts are gen­er­al­ly not friend­ly encounters.Complaints against police are going to be many.
Empathy for the police’s argu­ments are going to be hard to find.
So it’s total­ly under­stand­able that in Jamaica’s case, any Agency empow­ered to inves­ti­gate the Police, the Military and Corrections will invari­able receive more com­plaints against the Police as opposed to the cor­rec­tions Department which has to deal with peo­ple con­vict­ed of crimes and set apart from society.
Or the Military which has lim­it­ed and in most cas­es periph­er­al con­tact with mem­bers of the public.

What I find trou­bling yet total­ly unsur­pris­ing how­ev­er, is the silence which has now fall­en over the so-called Human Rights com­mu­ni­ty since the cre­ation of INDECOM.
Never mind that they are nev­er con­cerned about the death of inno­cent Jamaicans , just how well accused and con­vict­ed crim­i­nals are treated.
There has been no dai­ly calls and Television appear­ance from Jamaicans for Justice (JFF) through Carolyn Gomes. She was defrocked, reveal­ing her true agen­da. That Agenda though not total­ly con­fined to , includ­ed dis­sem­i­nat­ing sex­u­al­ly explic­it Homosexual mate­ri­als to chil­dren, but not before the polit­i­cal Elites hand­ed her a nation­al honor.

There is no dai­ly mind­less chat­ter from Horace Levy who head­ed his own eat-a-food NGO, the Peace Management Unit(PMI).
So Caroline Gomes was shamed into step­ping down from JFF and in walked Horace Levy . Levy of course, may be remem­bered for being antag­o­nis­tic against even the police’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of crim­i­nal gangs as what they are, crim­i­nal gangs.
He had alter­na­tive facts , alter­na­tive char­ac­ter­i­za­tion for those crim­i­nal gangs he labeled them “cor­ner crews.”
There was noth­ing which could be attrib­uted to Levy’s antag­o­nis­tic behav­ior out­side being dis­rup­tive, and an appeas­er of entrenched crim­i­nals in the tough inner city com­mu­ni­ties of Kingston, St. Andrew and oth­er parish­es across the Island.

In addi­tion to JFJ, PMI there are oth­ers , Families Against State Terrorism (FAST) , there is the Inter American Commission Commission on Human Rights and sev­er­al others.
Imagine if these peo­ple were arrayed along­side the police to erad­i­cate crime?

Local News paper  jamaicaob­serv­er reports that in it’s 7 years of exis­tence, INDECOM the Agency the Elites want­ed and got from Golding released some star­tling num­bers which should cause all of us to ask , are we get­ting val­ue for money.
(1) One hun­dred and eigh­teen( 118) mem­bers of Jamaica’s secu­ri­ty forces, main­ly police per­son­nel, before the court in 74 cas­es for alleged wrongdoing.
(2) Secured six con­vic­tions involv­ing 13 police personnel.
(3) The com­mis­sion lost four cas­es where­in five police­men have been acquit­ted of charges.

So lets unpack this lit­tle bit of data.
in 7 years INDECOM pre­sent­ed to the courts 74 cas­es . For this pur­pose the amount of offi­cers caught up in these cas­es are imma­te­r­i­al, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we look at the pathet­ic con­vic­tion rate even with the small amount of cas­es which has reached resolution.
That’s just over 10.57 cas­es on aver­age for each of those 7 years.
That com­putes to less than one case per month.
Remember we are not debat­ing con­vic­tion rates here, this num­ber of 74 cas­es rep­re­sents the total­i­ty of the cas­es INDECOM placed before the courts as a result of it’s supe­ri­or inves­tiga­tive skills and it’s renowned Independence.[sic]
Now INDECOM has claimed that the major­i­ty of reports they have inves­ti­gat­ed, they have found that offi­cers have done noth­ing wrong.
Do the math for your­selves, six con­vic­tions in 7 years means less than one con­vic­tion per year. Great returns on investment?
I think not !

So the ques­tion remain, if there are only 74 alleged cas­es of impro­pri­ety in 7 years ‚what is the Agency doing bet­ter than what the over­sight agen­cies before it man­aged to accomplish?
Terrence Williams ever look­ing to jus­ti­fy his job, ever look­ing to bur­nish his ego, argues “The long delay in hav­ing mat­ters resolved by the courts has result­ed in the loss of wit­ness­es, com­plainants and accused (who become frus­trat­ed, migrate or die),” the report stated.

So this sto­ry made me laugh, aren’t these the very same sce­nar­ios affect­ing cas­es across the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem? Among the promi­nent rea­sons, the com­mis­sion list­ed that defence attor­neys would request adjourn­ment (69 per cent of the times) and the mat­ter could not be reached or there was no court avail­able (16 per cent). “Defence requests include adjourn­ments because coun­sel was absent, change of coun­sel, or more time to pre­pare,” the report stated.

We have a less than ide­al crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem which could be argued, enhances criminality.
If the process pre­vents INDECOM from get­ting res­o­lu­tions to it’s 74 cas­es over a full 7 years, imag­ine just how much more the clogged cor­rupt and incom­pe­tent court sys­tem encour­ages crim­i­nals to com­mit crimes under­stand­ing they may nev­er see the inside of a courtroom?

INDECOM replaced the Police Public Complaints Authority and inves­ti­gates actions by mem­bers of the Security Forces.
Imagine if the resources invest­ed in INDECOM were har­nessed and appro­pri­ate­ly placed into bet­ter recruit­ment , train­ing and equip­ping of police officers?
Those resources could be bet­ter used in improv­ing cour­t­hous­es , hir­ing more pros­e­cu­tors and over­all cre­at­ing a bet­ter jus­tice sys­tem which guar­an­tees a bet­ter and more effec­tive deliv­ery of jus­tice for all Jamaicans.

That’s the way we cre­ate a sys­tem which is fair equi­table and just.
We now know that INDECOM was not only a bad law which has result­ed in much loss of inno­cent lives.
In addi­tion to the embold­en­ing of crim­i­nals , the loss of inno­cent lives , we now know it is demon­stra­bly not good val­ue for money .
These num­bers reveals what I have per­son­al­ly said from the start, we can do a whole lot bet­ter with those resources and we would have had a lot less ani­mus between the Security Forces and the Agency tasked with over­see­ing them.

Those are real facts.
Not “Alternative facts”