Police Fatal Shootings Down: Crime Up..up..up.

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Some Jamaican Business Leaders want the Police and (indecom)to coöper­ate in pro­tect­ing the coun­try from crim­i­nals. Generally the Country’s Business lead­ers do not get involved except when they think their bot­tom line is in danger.
Recently some busi­ness lead­ers spoke out against what they believed was a Jockeying between Investigators of the Police Department and those from (inde­com) to estab­lish who has super­sed­ing author­i­ty at scenes of crime.
The answer is sim­ple (inde­com) is not the police depart­ment tasked with crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions and as such it has no author­i­ty to take over a crime scene. Even if the Police killed some­one dur­ing the com­mis­sion of a crime the Police still have the author­i­ty to con­tin­ue the inves­ti­ga­tions as they nor­mal­ly would.
The over­sight Agency’s role is to look for impro­pri­ety if there are alle­ga­tions of impro­pri­ety. That how­ev­er does not give that body super­sed­ing author­i­ty over police, worse case sce­nario is that they share the scene.
The Private sec­tor had all the time in the world to lob­by at the time the (inde­com) Act was being debat­ed . The body chose to remain silent, though the effec­tive­ness of the Police in deal­ing with crime on the island direct­ly affects their bot­tom line.
It is rea­son­able to con­strue that their mealy-mouthed appeal for the police and (inde­com) to work togeth­er is relat­ed to dwin­dling bot­tom lines as crim­i­nals over­run the country.
Ever the cyn­ic, I do not believe the pri­vate sec­tor is par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about who has super­sed­ing author­i­ty at scenes of crime.

Offices of the police commissioner..
Offices of the police commissioner..

The (inde­com) Act was a bad law not because the Police do not need over­sight. Lord knows some of the Island’s cops need much more than over­sight in my esti­ma­tion. So that’s not the issue. It’s a bad law because it was not researched, or debat­able prop­er­ly so that the law could snag dirty cops while expos­ing false alle­ga­tions of police mis­con­duct by those with an axe to grind.
We have said repeat­ed­ly in this pub­li­ca­tion that the law is bad because it does not ful­fil the man­date which is required. It empow­ers a nar­cis­sist to abuse the pow­ers of the Act, and ulti­mate­ly send crime sta­tis­tics through the roof .
There should be no ques­tion about who has super­sed­ing author­i­ty at crime scenes.
If an (inde­com) inves­ti­ga­tor breach­es a crime scene tape he/​she should prompt­ly be arrest­ed and charged for breach­ing and poten­tial­ly con­t­a­m­i­nat­ing that crime scene.
In a real democ­ra­cy of course where Bills are prop­er­ly thought-out and debat­ed before they are passed into Laws this could not stand. A bad law is worse than no law at all and that is what the (inde­com) Act is, a bad law.

(Indecom) Investigators should not be at a shoot­ing scene unless there are alle­ga­tions of police impropriety.
This is a piece of leg­is­la­tion which was passed by a bunch of morons which will have debil­i­tat­ing con­se­quences for the fore­see­able future until the morons decide to repeal , rethink, and reau­tho­rize it.

The JCF says it has adopt­ed a pol­i­cy of advis­ing INDECOM of every shoot­ing result­ing in death or injury to any per­son which involves mem­bers of the force, whether or not mis­con­duct is estab­lished. However, the force says that the prac­tice has placed its inves­ti­ga­tors at a dis­ad­van­tage to prop­er­ly process/​investigate crime scenes, “as INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors are under­tak­ing every such scene with­out estab­lish­ing that there is mis­con­duct on the part of the secu­ri­ty forces”.

Officers converge on a crime scene in east kingston
Officers con­verge on a crime scene in east kingston

The JCF said that the Act is not clear as to whom or at what point it is deter­mined that there is an inci­dent, and that the issue is fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed by sec­tion 10 of the Act, which pro­vides for INDECOM to receive and inves­ti­gate com­plaints from per­sons who allege that the con­duct of a mem­ber of the secu­ri­ty forces result­ed in acts includ­ing death, injury, sex­u­al assault, dam­age to prop­er­ty, “or any­thing which, in the opin­ion of the com­mis­sion­er [of INDECOM] is an abuse of the rights of a cit­i­zen”. The JCF also com­plained that the INDECOM Act empow­ers the com­mis­sion­er to give direc­tives to the com­mis­sion­er of police, who is oblig­ed to imple­ment these rec­om­men­da­tions for the preser­va­tion of an inci­dent scene and oth­er mat­ters. It said that the fact is that in many cir­cum­stances, the direc­tives of INDECOM is rel­a­tive to oper­a­tional direc­tives to the police com­mis­sion­er. “Any such instruc­tion of INDECOM con­flicts with the pow­er of the com­mis­sion­er of police under sec­tion 3 (2) of the Constabulary Force Act, which states that the com­mis­sion­er (of police) has sole oper­a­tional com­mand and super­in­ten­dence of the force,” the JCF sub­mit­ted. The JCF also sug­gest­ed that the INDECOM Act must be amend­ed to make it clear that it does not con­flict the pro­vi­sions of the Constabulary Force Act.

In its sub­mis­sion, the JDF said that the Act pro­vides INDECOM with pow­ers, such as that of a Supreme Court judge, that are beyond those required for inves­ti­ga­tions and has been inter­pret­ed to bypass some of the estab­lished checks and bal­ances to assure fair­ness. “The Act devi­ates from inter­na­tion­al and local prece­dent and caus­es con­flict with the Defence Act, there­by hav­ing a severe neg­a­tive impact on the dis­ci­pli­nary and admin­is­tra­tive pro­ce­dures of the JDF,” the JDF submitted.

Trrence Williams
Trrence Williams

Yesterday September 23rd, Commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations (inde­com) Terrence Williams is report­ing that the num­ber of police shoot­ings which end in death is falling. He dis­closed that up to three years ago, fatal shoot­ings by the police aver­aged 250 per year, with the num­ber falling sig­nif­i­cant­ly to 129 in 2014. For the first half of this year, the num­ber stood at 50. Williams explained that there has been some improve­ment in the coöper­a­tion between the inves­tiga­tive body and the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), which has result­ed in less use of exces­sive and dead­ly force by the police dur­ing their oper­a­tions. “It is not that the police must not use force to defend them­selves, and to defend us, but that use of force must be rea­son­able and pro­por­tion­ate,” Williams said.
What Williams did not both­er to say is that Crime has gone up expo­nen­tial­ly. Which is not sur­pris­ing once one under­stands what is ulti­mate­ly impor­tant to (inde­com) and those who sup­port the Act in its present form. The fact is that any unlaw­ful killing the police does deval­ues us all . We should nev­er be com­fort­able ever, that agents of the state’s kills an inno­cent per­son in our names.
And so we are forced to bal­ance the need to secure our com­mu­ni­ties from dan­ger­ous blood thirsty crim­i­nals while doing all we can to ensure that those we ask to do the job do so in a way that is not anti­thet­i­cal to our val­ues and the fun­da­men­tal human rights of everyone.

That is no easy task but it must be done. What we must nev­er do how­ev­er is to ham­strung those we ask to pro­tect us with their lives . Neither should we empow­er those who are quite con­tent to slide in the blood of offi­cers to fame and power.

One thought on “Police Fatal Shootings Down: Crime Up..up..up.

  1. It is indeed a plea­sure that some­one so con­cerned could dig deep beneath the sur­face and c the rea­son Y so many of us r forced to give up our pen­sion and leave this noble orga­ni­za­tion to seek employ­ment else­where. It bring tears to my eyes to c what’s hap­pen­ing to our coun­try Jamaica because we fail to do what’s cor­rect . Is it that our law mak­ers not have oth­er things think­ing about ???

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