Regarding Batt’s Ruling:

Justice David Batts Jamaican Supreme court judge has ruled that the police have no pow­er, under the Road Traffic Act, to arbi­trar­i­ly stop and search motor vehi­cles, open­ing the door for a flood of lawsuits.

David Batts:

This was report­ed on in one of the coun­try’s news paper, the Jamaica Daily Gleaner. The sto­ry prompt­ed wide inter­est from the online com­mu­ni­ty this blog­ger includ­ed. The case which prompt­ed the rul­ing involved com­plainant Gary Hemans, a taxi dri­ver who was rep­re­sent­ed by attor­ney-at-law Sean Kinghorn, had sued the attor­ney gen­er­al to recov­er dam­ages aris­ing from his ordeal. Hemans tes­ti­fied that he and oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers were com­ing from the Hellshire Beach in St Catherine on May 16, 2007, when they were stopped at the Hellshire round­about by three police offi­cers. He said when he inquired why they were so aggres­sive, he was beat­en and tak­en to the Portmore Police Station, where he was locked up until the next day. Hemans said that at the sta­tion, he was forced to strip and squat in a cor­ner, and he felt humil­i­at­ed and embar­rassed. He said he was charged with assault­ing the police, using abu­sive lan­guage, and using inde­cent lan­guage. The taxi oper­a­tor attend­ed court sev­er­al times, but the case was dis­missed for want of pros­e­cu­tion because the police did not attend. Batts award­ed Hemans aggra­vat­ed dam­ages of $1.2 mil­lion for being forced to strip and stoop at the sta­tion, and due to the fact that the police offi­cers did not attend court. http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​3​0​6​3​0​/​l​e​a​d​/​l​e​a​d​1​.​h​tml

The judge went into a pro­tract­ed expla­na­tion of what he thought the law meant dur­ing the rul­ing which may be seen at the link above, we will get back to the rul­ing. Sometime ago in a let­ter pub­lished in the same medi­um I called on the Commissioner of Police Owen Ellington to take a stronger stance against offi­cers who arrest peo­ple , lock them up and do noth­ing more, it ends there. This prob­lem is an age-old one where cops make an arrest, writes up a complaint(information) sub­mits it to the court and does noth­ing else.

In my appeal to the com­mis­sion­er I indi­cat­ed to him that it falls on the mid­dle man­agers to make sure that these sim­ple yet crit­i­cal issues are addressed.http://​jamaica​-glean​er​.com/​g​l​e​a​n​e​r​/​2​0​1​0​1​1​0​5​/​l​e​t​t​e​r​s​/​l​e​t​t​e​r​s​1​.​h​tml

Quote: I ask the com­mis­sion­er of police to seri­ous­ly look at police­men who arrest peo­ple and do not com­plete the process of case prepa­ra­tion that is nec­es­sary to gain a con­vic­tion. I am all too famil­iar with lazy cops who bring the JCF into ridicule and dis­re­pute. End quote: This appeal was made as far back as November of 2010, my sug­ges­tion was not act­ed upon.

The result is 1) a cash award against the impov­er­ished state, 2) the poten­tial flood-gate of sim­i­lar law-suits to come, and 3) prob­a­bly most sig­nif­i­cant­ly, a mud­dy­ing of the rules gov­ern­ing Police abil­i­ty to use traf­fic stops to cut seri­ous crimes.

On read­ing the Judge’s rul­ing I was incensed, Jamaican judges are some of the most lib­er­al activist judges anywhere,they have demon­strat­ed by words and deeds that their views about the impact of crime on the fab­ric of soci­ety and social order are some­where in the 1950’s.

We have con­sis­tent­ly sought to bring atten­tion to this issue, we believe that despite strong puni­tive reme­dies in the law for seri­ous offences, in many cas­es Jamaican judges cir­cum­vent or sup­plant their own emo­tions and polit­i­cal feel­ings into the dis­pen­sa­tion of jus­tice, result­ing in the jus­tice sys­tem becom­ing a laugh­ing stock. This has metas­ta­sized in a whole slew of oth­er prob­lems for the country .

It may be not­ed that despite the pro­lif­er­a­tion of social-media which makes access to infor­ma­tion much more read­i­ly avail­able, like a large cross sec­tion of the pop­u­la­tion , Judges of the Island nation seem obliv­i­ous to what is real­ly hap­pen­ing out­side Jamaica. The tone and text or even the ver­biage they use does not always reflect the real­i­ties of the 21 st century.

In far too many instances their words and actions does not reflect their posi­tions as inde­pen­dent tri­ers of facts,but more so, as lib­er­al activists of the University of the West Indies. Many of the Island judges haven’t rec­on­ciled that they work for the people.

Having said that, I went back and looked at the rul­ing the fol­low­ing day, a sin­gle word jumped out at me. I sought to put my anger under con­trol as I read the rul­ing, despite get­ting the feel­ing that the rul­ing was writ­ten by the defense team of the plain­tiff, I was able to rec­on­cile in my mind that the learned judge did not break any new ground regard­ing the way police offi­cers do their job.

All because of one word, (arbi­trar­i­ly) in the first para­graph of the report that word actu­al­ly calmed my anger. I have no fur­ther quar­rel with the judge, and I will not ele­vate his rul­ing any fur­ther, suf­fice to say, he is cor­rect. This rul­ing puts the ball square­ly back onto the court of the police department.

The police does not and should not have the right to arbi­trar­i­ly pull peo­ple and search their vehi­cles with­out prob­a­ble cause. Probable cause in law is, sim­ply hav­ing a good law­ful rea­son for their actions. Police depart­ment all over the civ­i­lized world uses the road traf­fic law to thwart crim­i­nals who would use major thor­ough­fares to fur­ther their crim­i­nal undertakings.

Cops in Jamaica are obvi­ous­ly too stu­pid, or too lazy to intel­li­gent­ly lay out a cred­i­ble case for sim­ple traf­fic stops. I am total­ly aware that Jamaican law favors crim­i­nals, it is more prof­itable to break some than to obey them, most peo­ple the world over, rec­og­nizes this by now. However how dumb and unimag­i­na­tive are the cops in this par­tic­u­lar case?

Literally every motor vehi­cle ply­ing Jamaica’s thor­ough­fares may rea­son­ably and law­ful­ly be pulled over from one breech or anoth­er. Smart cop needs only be patient, fol­low and observe. In oth­er cas­es the vehi­cles have imper­fec­tions which makes pulling them over total­ly justified.

Didn’t many peo­ple argue that they would get offi­cers with degrees to do the job? How is it then that the force has gone from 70% clear-up of seri­ous crimes just over two decades ago to 7% today? Not just that, even then, the cas­es which result in a con­vic­tion are some­times over­turned on appeals. Are we to accept that with all the peo­ple with degrees join­ing the depart­ment from what Wilmott (Mutty )Perkins termed “the intel­lec­tu­al ghet­to” the force is get­ting worse?

Commissioner Ellington I know you are con­strained by an intran­si­gent polit­i­cal estab­lish­ment. The estab­lish­ment com­pris­es peo­ple from both polit­i­cal par­ties, many of whom are crim­i­nals. I am empa­thet­ic toward you because of the many crim­i­nals which are scat­tered through­out your own depart­ment. Of the many chal­lenges you face includ­ing the many and var­ied indi­vid­u­als, groups and orga­ni­za­tions ded­i­cat­ed toward aid­ing and com­fort­ing crim­i­nals, we under­stand and sup­port you.

But on this issue you get no sup­port from me. That a case would turn out this way, that a judge could grand­stand at the expense of an entire law enforce­ment agency because of the actions of a few tardy cops is unfor­giv­able. In that open let­ter I wrote to you I spoke about mem­bers bring­ing the Agency into disrepute,this affects how stops are con­duct­ed . Commissioner Ellington this is disrepute.

There is a sig­nif­i­cant yet unsus­tain­able lev­el of incom­pe­tence and utter dis­re­gard to sim­ple pro­to­col in your depart­ment. That mis­ter Commissioner is on you, when a team does bad­ly they don’t fire the team mis­ter Commissioner,they fire the coach.