No Case Submission In So Called Death Squad Case Turns Spotlight On INDECOM

If the ulti­mate no case sub­mis­sion against the three police offi­cers charged with the mur­der of Andrew Bisson recent­ly does noth­ing, it demon­strates that the resources being wast­ed on INDECOM would be bet­ter uti­lized upgrad­ing the office of Director of Public Prosecution(DPP).
The three offi­cers, Detective Corporal Kevin Adams, District Constable Howard Brown and Constable Carl Bucknor were arrest­ed and charged for the killing of Andrew Bisson in a police oper­a­tion on September 5, 2011. 

As the Prosecution’s case ground to a screech­ing halt like a creaky old auto­mo­bile whose engine had com­plet­ed its final rev­o­lu­tion, the lead pros­e­cu­tor, Queen’s Counsel Caroline Hay told the court, the pros­e­cu­tion would be unable to negate the defense’s posi­tion of self-defense.
If the pros­e­cu­tion was unable, after 8 years to negate the defen­dan­t’s claims, [as police offi­cers car­ry­ing out their duties], why were they charged and held in cus­tody and sub­ject­ed to all the atten­dant neg­a­tive ram­i­fi­ca­tions which accom­pa­ny a crim­i­nal trial?

Why the case was brought in the first place must be the ques­tion, and that ques­tion should now be the cen­ter of any posi­tion for­ward for the Police Federation, [if for no-one else]?
It is imper­a­tive that the sys­tem of jus­tice be fair to all JAMAICANS, not just the priv­i­leged few who dwell in ivory tow­ers above Cross-Roads.
In that regard, Jamaicans can least afford to have the voic­es of those priv­i­leged few dom­i­nate pol­i­cy posi­tions as they are the least and last to be neg­a­tive­ly impact­ed by vio­lent crimes.
Already there have been some pre­emp­tive salvos launched about what should hap­pen to police offi­cers who plant evi­dence in order to gain con­vic­tions.
None of those voic­es have said a sin­gle word about how Terrence Williams, Hamish Campbell and INDECOM manip­u­lat­ed a dis­grun­tled con­sta­ble [Chucky Brown], not only to con­fess and crim­i­nal­ly impli­cate him­self in mur­ders, but to lie on his colleagues.

It was clear dur­ing the tri­al that not only was the evi­dence before the court shaky but it appeared that the inves­ti­gat­ing agency INDECOM, pro­duced expert wit­ness­es who were.….….… let’s just say, less than experts.
During the tri­al, Chief Justice Bryan Sykes the tri­al judge expressed con­cern about whether the accused police­men were afford­ed an objec­tive and fair inves­ti­ga­tion? Mind you, not a fair tri­al, but a fair inves­ti­ga­tion, that ought to give every­one pause.
What I haven’t heard is a sin­gle peep from any of the self-right­eous crim­i­nal defense lawyers who have an opin­ion on every­thing speak to this com­ment from the chief jus­tice.
The Judge fur­ther added crit­i­cal­ly,[ that it seemed that the accused were being tar­get­ed by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM)].
Again, its crick­ets from the usu­al­ly vocif­er­ous self-pro­claimed author­i­ties on the law and moral­i­ty in our tiny ticky-ticky pond.
Is jus­tice for every­one but mem­bers of the police force? 

According to sources in the court­room, the Defense pre­sent­ed a doc­u­ment which indi­cat­ed that the error rate for a properly/​trained exam­in­er with the required com­pe­tence is between 3.4% — 6. 5%.
Additionally, those who were of sub­stan­dard train­ing, the error rate is between 15 – 25%.

Witnesses who tes­ti­fied on behalf of INDECOM dis­agreed with ter­mi­nolo­gies and set stan­dards used by renowned experts.
One wit­ness, in par­tic­u­lar, was unable to agree with clear incon­sis­ten­cies which were clear even to the untrained eye. 
Justice Sykes told the Home Circuit Court, in the absence of the jury, that he first became con­cerned when accused Detective Corporal Kevin Adams and District Constable Howard Brown were iden­ti­fied as ‘Gaza Man’ and ‘Chucky’, respec­tive­ly, by a Crown wit­ness.
That same wit­ness the next day admit­ted that he made a mis­take.

It is impor­tant to under­stand that the experts used by INDECOM were indeed sub­stan­dard.
And that the rea­son that the pros­e­cu­tion could not even meet the most basic pros­e­cu­to­r­i­al stan­dards which would have forced the three offi­cers to mount a defense, was the incom­pe­tence of INDECOM’s own expert wit­ness­es and the weak­ness of the evi­dence pre­sent­ed to the court.
On these fault lines in the sys­tem, the lives and lib­er­ty of mem­bers of the JCF are being decid­ed by the very tes­ti­mo­ny giv­en by these indi­vid­u­als on behalf of INDECOM.
On these types of fraud­u­lent and con­coct­ed evi­dence, INDECOM is ruin­ing the lives of hard-work­ing police offi­cers who are sim­ply try­ing to do an incred­i­bly dan­ger­ous and dif­fi­cult job. 

From the begin­ning of the process, which brought INDECOM into exis­tence I argued that before a body like INDECOM is cre­at­ed appro­pri­ate lev­els of resources, (as was eco­nom­i­cal­ly pos­si­ble), should be appro­pri­at­ed to bring the Justice sys­tem up to cred­i­ble stan­dards.
Which meant, upgrad­ing the police and courts so that deliv­ery of the jus­tice prod­uct can be time­ly and fair, crit­i­cal require­ments for reduc­ing crime.
I argued then, despite protes­ta­tions to the con­trary, that cre­at­ing INDECOM would cause crime to esca­late as peo­ple would be embold­ened to be dis­re­spect­ful not just to indi­vid­ual police offi­cers but to the col­lec­tive we refer to as the rule of law.
On that alone, I have been vin­di­cat­ed ten times over as INDECOM is turn­ing out to be an out of con­trol alba­tros around the nation’s neck.

Oversight of the Police is a fore­gone con­clu­sion. how­ev­er, there were effec­tive over­sight of the police, (sev­er­al lay­ers) which had greater mea­sur­able suc­cess beyond any­thing INDECOM has achieved since it came into exis­tence.
The argu­ments prof­fered by ene­mies of the police and those clam­or­ing for INDECOM was that the police can­not police the police.
Those catchy buzz terms sound­ed rather good to those detrac­tors but they nev­er both­ered to think about the sev­er­al civil­ian com­plaint bod­ies which exist­ed pre INDECOM.
The nar­ra­tive was far too juicy, it sound­ed far too ratio­nal, even for some ex-mem­bers who clam­ored for more over­sight with­out under­stand­ing the del­i­cate bal­ance which ought to exist between over­sight and qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty.
What those lay­ers of over­sight lacked were agen­das anti­thet­i­cal to the good of the nation.
INDECOM has no loy­al­ty to the nation, it has no com­mit­ment to nation-build­ing, as the JCF has done, giv­ing blood and tears through­out its exis­tence.
INDECOM is ded­i­cat­ed to the ego of an ego­ma­ni­a­cal nar­cis­sist, its mis­sion is geared toward decon­struct­ing the JCF to the delight of those who argued for its creation.

As an aside, what exact­ly has Antony Anderson done dif­fer­ent­ly, (no scratch that ) done bet­ter than the pre­vi­ous two com­mis­sion­ers of police who pre­ced­ed him?
There is no one clam­or­ing for a change of the com­mis­sion­er of police.
Could that be because he was nev­er a police offi­cer?
I believe the nation’s dirty draw­ers is show­ing on this and the odor is rather obnoxious.