New INDECOM Head Should Be Under No Illusions About Replicating Williams’ Harm…

We are cred­i­bly informed that Hugh Faulkner has been sworn in to replace Terrence Williams as the com­mis­sion­er of INDECOM.
As most of you know, Terrence Williams was the first com­mis­sion­er to be appoint­ed to head the new agency after the Act was autho­rized in the Island’s par­lia­ment in 2010.
Williams served the first term and was appoint­ed to a sec­ond, but opt­ed to leave ear­ly, sub­se­quent­ly cre­at­ing space for a new com­mis­sion­er to replace him.
[Faulkner was the exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Legal Aid Council and has served on sev­er­al boards and tri­bunals includ­ing the Board of the Mico University College, the Toll Authority, Jamaica Mortgage Bank, Jamaica Intellectual Property Office, and the Public Broadcasting Corporation of Jamaica]. (source, Jamaica Gleaner)

Terrence Williams’ tenure has been fraught with ten­sions between INDECOM and the JCF, and the JDF, two of three arms of gov­ern­ment, his agency is man­dat­ed to give over­sight to. The oth­er is the Corrections depart­ment.
Willimas’ tenure may only be summed up as a mis­placed belief that over­sight is syn­ony­mous with adver­sar­i­al.
There has been no mixed bag about Terrence Williams’ tenure as the head of INDECOM, there is no fac­tu­al basis on which to arrive at any oth­er con­clu­sion than to con­clude that his tenure has been a colos­sal fail­ure.
Williams and his sup­port­ers point to few­er police shoot­ings as a mea­sure of what they per­ceive to be a [suc­cess].
The harsh real­i­ty, is that many police offi­cers walked away from doing their jobs because of the con­fronta­tion­al and antag­o­nis­tic nature of Williams’ and INDECOM, the per­se­cu­tion he embarked on, accus­ing offi­cers of wrong­do­ing in cas­es where they were only doing their jobs.
As a result, Terrence Williams’ record as head of INDECOM has pro­duced far less pos­i­tive results than the CCRB was before the INDECOM act was autho­rized. Crime has increased expo­nen­tial­ly, includ­ing vio­lent crimes and thou­sands of Jamaicans have lost their lives need­less­ly as a con­se­quence of his tenure.
Though crime can­not rea­son­ably be laid sole­ly at the feet of INDECOM or Williams for that mat­ter, Williams’ acrony­mous rela­tion­ship, and his will­ing­ness to per­se­cute police offi­cers has lent itself to a mas­sive embold­en­ing of crim­i­nals in the coun­try, some­thing the Island will pay dear­ly for, long after Terrence Williams’ name is for­got­ten.
If the idea was to have thou­sands more inno­cent Jamaicans slaugh­tered need­less­ly, the coun­try over­run with more crim­i­nal­i­ty, and few­er mur­der­ers held account­able, then Terrence Williams and INDECOM have been a success.

Terrence Williams start­ed by enter­ing into an unholy alliance with Carolyn Gomes of JFJ, a rabid­ly anti-police group large­ly fund­ed by for­eign-inter­est, that start­ed oper­at­ing in Jamaica around the mid to late ’90s.
Gomez, a pedi­atric doc­tor seemed to have a vendet­ta against the police and she waged a relent­less cam­paign against the nation’s pre­mier law enforce­ment agency, with the silent acqui­es­cence of both polit­i­cal par­ties.
In the end, kar­ma had its way and Gomes was revealed to the Jamaican peo­ple and like a puff of smoke, Gomes dis­ap­peared with the wind.
At the time that the INDECOM act was cob­bled togeth­er under the infa­mous and abbre­vi­at­ed admin­is­tra­tion of Bruce Golding, they knew full well that Terrence Williams was an ego-mani­a­cal nar­cis­sis­tic Don Quixote with an agen­da against the police, but that was the per­son Golding, his par­ty and their PNP co-sign­ers wanted.

Terrence Williams’s tenure as the head of INDECOM must be remem­bered truth­ful­ly as a dis­mal fail­ure, that should nev­er be repli­cat­ed. It was one fraught with fights with oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies at a time when he ought to have been build­ing bridges in order to achieve suc­cess for the Jamaican peo­ple.
Continued media pos­tur­ing, court fights, cat­fight­ing, and shame­ful demand for more pow­er instead of doing the job he was paid to do was all that Terrence Williams gave Jamaica.
In the end, thou­sands of Jamaicans died who should nev­er have died.
Finally, the major­i­ty of the Jamaican peo­ple began to wake up to the harm INDECOM has been doing and their inter­est in the agency began to wane.
The JCF, JDF, & Corrections should have inde­pen­dent over­sight of their oper­a­tion. No agency that is giv­en such awe­some pow­ers, includ­ing the pow­er of life and death should be allowed to inves­ti­gate itself any­more.
Nevertheless, the inves­ti­gat­ing agency should be fair, impar­tial, and sin­gu­lar­ly sole­ly focused on get­ting to the truth.
Terrence Williams shred­ded INDECOM’s mis­sion from the start, it is any­one’s guess whether this [new fel­low] will be able to resus­ci­tate that bad­ly dam­aged image.

Is he anoth­er polit­i­cal flunky with an agen­da, is he focused on the task at hand, or is he there to pon­tif­i­cate on the tax­pay­er’s dime?
We will with­hold judg­ment, but as we warned about Williams, and kept his feet to the fire while the nation slept, so too will [this fel­low] be under the micro­scope, good or bad.

Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer,
he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
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