More Sane Voices Against Prosecutorial Powers For INDECOM (audio)

As I have said repeat­ed­ly INDECOM should not have the right to pros­e­cute its own investigations.
In a let­ter to one of the dai­ly pub­li­ca­tions, Attorney at law Valerie Neita Robertson said the following:

INDECOM must not arrest, charge, and pros­e­cute its own inves­ti­ga­tions but must be sub­ject to the con­sti­tu­tion­al buffer of the Office of the DPP if we are to ensure that jus­tice in Jamaica is not an illu­sion. Let us all be guid­ed by the oft-used phrase that “there can be no peace with­out justice.”

(Listen to the audio commentary).

Miss Neita’s words are time­ly on this mat­ter even as this issue has been of burn­ing import over the last eight years since the Act came into being.
When there is no con­sti­tu­tion­al buffer see the (DPP)INDECOM gets to run roughshod over our law enforce­ment offi­cers even when they are act­ing in con­for­mi­ty with the let­ter of the law.

In case after case, we see INDECOM over­step­ping the bounds of its man­date and the bounds of com­mon sense in its glee­ful zeal to embar­rass police offi­cers using the faulty jus­tice sys­tem as a tool of persecution.
I spoke about one such case in an arti­cle in November of 2017.

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

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.

Dealing with law­break­ers at scenes of this nature are not easy for police offi­cers. In these scenes, the most docile per­son is empow­ered and embold­ened to be aggres­sive and unlaw­ful based sole­ly on the numer­i­cal strength of the group.
Police offi­cers are still expect­ed to clear thor­ough­fares and restore order. When they attempt to do their jobs there are no short­age of assaults on their persons.
If they act to pro­tect them­selves they are indicted.
This non­sense must stop.

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 its powers.

(This post has been updat­ed since it was first published.)