Joint Select Committee Acted Appropriately And Sensibly .…..

As an un-apolo­getic cru­sad­er against the (inde­com) Act as con­fig­ured, I am pleased to see that the Joint Select Committee of Parliament has come to it’s sens­es at least in this case and decid­ed to add over­sight to (inde­com).
Form the incep­tion of (inde­com) I argued stri­dent­ly that the (JCF) should have over­sight, how­ev­er I believed then and still do today that at present what obtains is an adver­sar­i­al con­fronta­tion­al elit­ists approach being employed by the neo­phyte agency which is head­ed by Terrence Williams now in his sec­ond five year term. Williams is a pow­er hun­gry nar­cis­sist who has an over inflat­ed ego and a rapa­cious desire for more and more unfet­tered power.

Williams from the get go cre­at­ed an adver­sar­i­al envi­ron­ment between his office and the entire Jamaica Constabulary Force which poi­soned any well of good­will and coöper­a­tion which could poten­tial­ly have exist­ed, which by the way would be ben­e­fi­cial to him the JCF and the country.
Doing his job well and main­tain­ing respect­ful coöper­a­tion with the JCF are not mutu­al­ly exclu­sive goals. That was not what Williams wanted.
Williams was proud to make sure cer­tain sec­tions of the soci­ety knew that he was adver­sar­i­al with the Police when he shared a stage with the group Jamaicans for Justice and its then head Carolyn Gomes an activist who delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed much enmi­ty, and spread much lies and mis-infor­ma­tion about exces­sive police behavior.

This is not to say that the police was not guilty of some of the trans­gres­sions mem­bers were accused of com­mit­ting. Notwithstanding because of the advo­ca­cy and lob­by­ing effort of the group it was out­side the realm of whats appro­pri­ate for Williams to share the stage with them at the time.
The police then called on the Government to fire Williams , need­less to say the Government did not acqui­esce to those demands . I don’t believe the Police expect­ed the Government to do any­thing they asked for.

Most strik­ing­ly Williams has rapa­cious­ly pursed more and more pow­er argu­ing he need­ed Prosecutorial pow­ers to go after mem­bers of the Police Department, the Military and Corrections Departments.
In an illu­mi­nat­ing stroke of irony Terrence Williams simul­ta­ne­ous­ly opposed any over­sight of his (inde­com)..
Williams did not make ene­mies of just the Police , Military and Corrections, he picked fights with the nation’s Director of Public Prosecution (DPP) Paula Llewelyn.
Of course in Jamaica no one wants to share pow­er so this did not sit well with the (DPP). The mat­ter came up for review in Parliament. The idea of anoth­er over­sight lev­el for the com­mis­sion was intro­duced by Minister of National Security, Peter Bunting and Minister of Justice, Senator Mark Golding with­in the com­mit­tee. However it was the DPP who sug­gest­ed it to Parliament, fol­low­ing a row with (inde­com) boss, Terrence Williams, over her han­dling of the case involv­ing the con­tro­ver­sial killing of aspir­ing DJ Robert “Kentucky Kid” in 2009 by the police..
Williams does not believe in the Prosecutorial process in place to ade­quate­ly weigh and present evi­dence. What he wants is carte-blanche to go after offi­cers with unchecked pow­ers to per­se­cute, not prosecute.

Many mem­bers of the JSC did not want to check the unfet­tered pow­ers of (inde­com) and it’s Napoleonic leader, most­ly out of fear for the howls of con­dem­na­tion which is sure to ensue from the crim­i­nal rights fra­ter­ni­ty par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Bar Association and the Norman Manley Law school at the Mona Campus UWI.
Notwithstanding after Bunting read a let­ter addressed to Golding out­lin­ing his views on the mat­ter the com­mit­tee had an about face.
In his let­ter Bunting said »>.

With very lit­tle over­sight from Parliament, Commissioner Williams, and pos­si­bly his team at INDECOM, “decides admin­is­tra­tive, inves­ti­gate and pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al issues with no oper­a­tional review”. “The qual­i­ty and fair­ness of these deci­sions are crit­i­cal to main­tain­ing both the con­fi­dence of the pub­lic, as well as the trust of the secu­ri­ty forces,” Bunting said. “Importantly, if mem­bers of the secu­ri­ty forces con­clude that engag­ing armed vio­lent crim­i­nals is a ‘no win’ exer­cise for them, then we run the risk of facil­i­tat­ing crim­i­nal impuni­ty with obvi­ous adverse con­se­quences to the society”.

I have been mak­ing the very same argu­ments in this medi­um. I am extreme­ly pleased to see that final­ly com­mon sense has pre­vailed in this mat­ter. Too many peo­ple die when police refrain from going after criminals.
I have repeat­ed­ly asked do we all have a desire to see Jamaica with less crime?
The peo­ple who sup­port (indecom’s)power grab are ben­e­fit­ing great­ly and have always ben­e­fit­ed from crime in the past.
They are the Nation’s crim­i­nal lawyers , many of whom dou­ble as leg­is­la­tors. Therein lies the problem.