The central argument proffered by Jamaicans for Justice in its suit against the promotion of former SSP Delroy Hewitt„ is that the (PCS) Police Service Commission, did not do a comprehensive enough investigation, before greenlighting Hewitt’s promotion.
The argument of the lobby was not without merit for promotions going forward. The country should be seeking to find ways to engage in best practices.
Nevertheless, the way the lobby went about the case was prejudicial and biased against SSP Hewitt, a senior police officer of impeccable character.
Instead of engaging the Government and the PSC in dialogue on the issue Jamaicans For Justice chose to go after a single police officer it did not like, and in that, it’s biased vendetta was laid bare.
The recent ruling of the British-based Privy Council, buttressed the claim made by JFJ, that had the PCS conducted a lengthy Investigation it would potentially have arrived at a different conclusion.
The decision is considered academic, because Hewitt is long retired.
Personally, I would not add the word [academic]to anything around that ruling, as the PSC was not legally bound to conduct Investigations of candidates before it for promotion.
In the interest of full disclosure, this writer is not a lawyer but it seems to me that the decision of the Privy Council is purely suggestive, as the PSC did not fail as there was no legally binding duty to adhere to conducting investigations before greenlighting promotions.
The tragedy in this whole débâcle is that the Government did not mount a challenge against the case on the basis that JFJ had no legal standing to mount the challenge to Hewitt’s promotion.
Neither did it challenge JFJ’s case on the frivolity of it, since the PSC had no legal binding duty to conduct pre-promotions investigations.
The fact is that the Government did not care because the matter was about the police department.
The real victims of the litany of anti-policing lobbies, (JFJ included) which have sprung up over the last three decades or so, are law-abiding Jamaicans who are not invested in crime.
Make no mistake about it, the supposed good they are doing is certainly not reflected in the data as it relates to the low standard of living Jamaicans are forced to endure as a result of the Islands exponentially high crime rate.
For one, abuse of women are on the increase, there is no systematic effort to get Jamaican men to respect women and not see them as property and or objects to be used and abused.
The plight of children is still an incredibly sore subject which requires immediate attention, but supporting children’s rights is not as sexy for JFJ and others, as attacking the police.
Murders, Rapes and other sexual assaults are widespread, including sexual assaults perpetrated on children and even babies.
Violent crimes of other nature are also widespread throughout the Island, making victims of literally every law-abiding Jamaican.
Yet the focus of the supposed human rights lobbies is solely focused on how many murderers are killed by the security forces.
Jamaicans For Justice has certainly not been Jamaica’s first anti-police [rodeo].
Long before they came on the scene, Flo O’Connor was there, and there were others whom I cannot recall at the moment.
The truth is, during the ’80s when those bleeding ‑hearts were crying about police taking out murderous gangsters, homicides were just over 500 annually.
Criminals were running away from Jamaica and Investments and Jamaicans in the Diaspora were pouring in.
Jamaicans in the ’80s were not stupid, they realized that in order for their standard of living to improve they could not have murderous thugs in their midst, so no one really paid much attention to Flo O’Connor, Horace Levy or the others.
Neither O’Connor nor Levy received much traction but someone saw an opening to step into that space and make a name for herself.
In stepped the White Jamaican baby doctor and before long she was an icon, a legend, she received a national honor, and the entire national security apparatus was answerable to her.
The long-held glue which bound our police department professionals together, [Esprit de ‑Corps], was maligned as a blue wall of silence it was out the door.
It wasn’t a blue wall of silence, it was a bond which meant cops would give their own lives in support of each other when they are actively fighting for their lives.
Owen Ellington, the then Commissioner of Police, was too busy promoting his friends and family to care that the department was in deep distress.
Carolyn Gomez’s toxic influence had seeped into the Police Academic curriculum, and the country was not training cops anymore, it was now in the business of turning out agents for JFJ.
The sad reality is that it took roughly two decades and thousands of innocent lives for karma to catch up with Gomez and she was exposed as a fraudulent purveyor of gay pornographic smut to children.
Not only did they not take back the national honor, but she was also not prosecuted. Yes, white skin has the same power in Jamaica as it does in America, it is privileged.
The damage was already done.
Police officers who placed their bodies between bloodthirsty killers and innocent citizens were themselves portrayed as extrajudicial killers.
The term “extrajudicial” was attached to every police-involved shooting, never mind that the guns recovered, the innocent dead and wounded.
The focus became that police were shooting too many criminals.
Attention was successfully deflected away from the homicide numbers to the cops doing the heavy lifting.
(a) Perfectly legitimate police fatal shootings were portrayed as [extrajudicial killings].
(b) Because plainclothes cops were the officers facing down the criminals, and because plainclothes cops made up only a small portion of the force at the time, roughly about (6 – 8%), those officers were necessarily and rationally featured in violent confrontations with criminals.
© The Aura created as a result of the bravery and dedication of those officers (name-brand-cops) served as a useful deterrent to those who would take life as well as those who would engage in gang activities.
(d) Those officers were national heroes, not villains. They never received a national honor.
Sure there were instances where cops stepped over the line, those actions cannot be denied and should never be condoned or covered over.
But planes fall from the skies because of pilot error, people die on operating tables, because surgeons make mistakes, cars, trucks and buses crash because drivers make mistakes, patients die because nurses give incorrect medicine.
I’m not sure why police officers who risk their lives unlike any of the aforementioned, are held to a higher standard of scrutiny?
Neither the Governing political party nor the political opposition, will come clean and tell the Jamaican people that their strategy has been a colossal disaster.
Neither will the criminal rights lobby.
What is left of the police force has estimated that there are well over two thousand gangs operating in the small space of 4411 square miles.
Before it was only the poor and the business-people who were being murdered but of late a few politicians are having their domes pushed back as well.
Today the police are not engaging criminals as much, this writer is supportive of that position.
Why should officers risk
The non-police, commissioner of police, recently said he is confident that given time every police officer in Jamaica will be a human rights activists.
Every person who ever donned the uniform of a police officer with the right intent is a human rights activist.
It is the commitment to the rule of law, the protection of the weak which propels them to run toward the danger when everyone runs away from it.
What police officers do not need is a redefinition of policing by someone who was given the top policing role without a single idea of what policing is.
Jamaicans certainly need to rise up against these charlatans and frauds who talk about human rights but does not speak to the right their dead relatives had to the most important human right.
The right to life!