Shining The Light On INDECOM

This arti­cle was writ­ten and pub­lished on June 6^th 2019, five years lat­er Hamish Campbell is still at INDECOM seem­ing­ly with a renewed sense of assertive­ness anchored in the false belief that Jamaicans are either too stu­pid or too enam­ored with his white skin to care about his past. This writer has no such hand­i­cap, as a con­se­quence I am on a mis­sion to out the liars who stand in judge­ment over those who make the sac­ri­fices to keep every­one safe. 

I have always won­dered what exact­ly it was that impressed Jamaican author­i­ties about Mark Shields, Les Green and the oth­er British Cops who emi­grat­ed to Jamaica, sup­pos­ed­ly to help trans­form the Jamaica Constabulary Force into a mod­ern police force, or so they say. The truth of the mat­ter is that from what we have heard, Mark Shields got him­self a Jamaican bride, secured him­self a secu­ri­ty com­pa­ny in our coun­try, or so we are told.  Never mind that even if they do not stay, they end up spend­ing sig­nif­i­cant amounts of time before leaving.  And what is it about these white men going out to the Colonies being referred to as [Expatriates] while Black peo­ple head­ing to England are mere [immi­grants]? So you nev­er thought about that? Okay, then it’s just me.  None of those [immi­grant cops]have fas­ci­nat­ed me more than Hamish Campbell who arrived as over­seer and sec­ond in charge of INDECOM. And I will talk a lit­tle about Hamish Campbell a lit­tle lat­er but I want­ed to just high­light some things which Les Green said about the local cops he was forced to encounter out there in the colony. We all know how the Colonial mas­ters view the lazy sub-human peas­antry. But I rather pre­fer to let Les Green speak for Les Green and you can decide if he even both­ered to hide the old tropes and big­ot­ed attack lines which they have always used when they speak of black people. Never mind that at the time the unin­tel­li­gent Jamaican media gob­bled it up and saw noth­ing unsa­vory or dis­gust­ing­ly offen­sive in those tropes. Instead, they used the oppor­tu­ni­ty to pile on the police, their black coun­try­men and women.

Said Green: “When I first went there, the foren­sic capa­bil­i­ty was very poor and inef­fec­tive. There it still takes up to two years to get DNA results, unlike in the UK where you can get them in two days.“He added: “In Jamaica, there is noth­ing like the sense of urgency I had in the UK where I would send some­one out to take a state­ment and they would do it imme­di­ate­ly. There, I could send some­one out for weeks on end and even­tu­al­ly they would come back with a state­ment. “If a pret­ty girl walks past, they will look at the pret­ty girl instead of what they are doing. There is always tomor­row, always anoth­er time to do some­thing. There’s always a drink or a pret­ty woman to dis­tract them.” Green, is cred­it­ed with bring­ing about sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments to Jamaica’s crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly homi­cides, described his eight-year tenure as frus­trat­ing because of the lev­el of vio­lence and weak sys­tems of inves­ti­ga­tion. (Gleaner)

I do share Les Green’s frus­tra­tion with the colonists after all, why would­n’t he be annoyed at the time? They shook us from the Queen’s broke and des­ti­tute frock-tails over 57 years ago. Battered and in sham­bles after the blitzkrieg of Hitler’s Luftwaffe, England want­ed some­one to give her hand­outs, instead of being respon­si­ble for anyone.  Since then, we haven’t man­aged to stand on our own, we still insist on call­ing her “our sov­er­eign lady”, even though I can­not imag­ine why? We refuse to write a con­sti­tu­tion which demon­strates that we can gov­ern our­selves with­out depend­ing on the British to medi­ate our dis­putes, and deter­mine our most seri­ous crim­i­nal cases.  What we have demon­strat­ed, is that when the rub­ber meets the road we can­not trust our­selves to decide on our own with­out “Massa”, decid­ing for us. Green’s broad­side was the typ­i­cal racist trope of the lazy, over­sexed blacks who have no intel­li­gence or sense of urgency. Unfortunately for the politi­cians and media, couched in his insults was the lan­guage which spoke to their inad­e­qua­cies as well but it com­plete­ly went over their heads and they curt­sied, bowed and agreed with “Massa”.

I had one slight con­cern about Les Green’s com­ments at the time and still to this day I still have those con­cerns. You know out­side the Overseer/​Natives thing he had going on there. When Les Green said the fol­low­ing, did he think that because we are back­ward natives,[sic] we did not know what goes on in drea­ry bleak Old England?  “In Jamaica, there is noth­ing like the sense of urgency I had in the UK where I would send some­one out to take a state­ment and they would do it imme­di­ate­ly. There, I could send some­one out for weeks on end and even­tu­al­ly they would come back with a state­ment. “If a pret­ty girl walks past, they will look at the pret­ty girl instead of what they are doing. There is always tomor­row, always anoth­er time to do some­thing. There’s always a drink or a pret­ty woman to dis­tract them.” Wait just a minute there, accord­ing to… (https://whathappenedtomadeleinemccann.blogspot.com/2014/04/a‑biography-of-hamish-campbell-man_28.html Hamish Campbell the [British Immigrant] inves­ti­gat­ing our police offi­cers was actu­al­ly the lead offi­cer in a mur­der case in which evi­dence was alleged­ly plant­ed in order to gain convictions.

Hamish Campbell — was the (IO) Investigating Officer- placed in charge of the day-to-day inves­ti­ga­tion into Jill Dando’s mur­der in 1999. He was pri­mar­i­ly respon­si­ble for the arrest and charg­ing of Barry Bulsara, known also as ‘Barry George’, with the mur­der of Dando. Bulsara was sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment for mur­der­ing Jill Dando but sub­se­quent­ly acquit­ted, sev­en years lat­er, on appeal.  Prior to the appoint­ment of Moore and Campbell to run the case, the inves­ti­ga­tion had found noth­ing of inter­est, despite over 7 months on the case. The Met had thou­sands of reg­is­tered infor­mants. Not one of them had come up with any infor­ma­tion at all about who might have killed Jill Dando and why. A reward of £250,000 for infor­ma­tion (about £½ mil­lion today) had pro­duced noth­ing. Operation Oxborough had inter­viewed in depth Dando’s fam­i­ly, friends, lovers (of whom there had been many) and col­leagues. As Gillard and Flynn cor­rect­ly observed in their book (p. 428), “The mur­der inves­ti­ga­tion was at an impasse”. Then Campbell took over. The only foren­sic evi­dence against Bulsara was a speck of firearms residue said to have been ‘found’ in his coat pock­et. Hamish Campbell appeared on Crimewatch to rein­force in the public’s mind that it was an obses­sive lon­er they were look­ing for. He asked for the public’s help in iden­ti­fy­ing such a person.  It was a full 15 days after the Cecil Gee coat was seized that it was tak­en to a Mr Robin Keeley of the Forensic Science Service on 2 May 2000. That 15-day delay has nev­er been explained. He then found a sin­gle speck of firearm residue inside the left pock­et, and said that it was con­sis­tent with the type of firearm used to kill Dando.  D. Cliff Richard, a friend of Jill Dando, was inter­viewed ‘a num­ber of times’ by the police inves­ti­gat­ing Dando’s killing. Barry Bulsara spent 7 years in prison before he was released after win­ning his sec­ond appeal.

The pat­tern was evi­dent in an ear­li­er case this time it was the case of Ira Thomas a black man, who was quote [fit­ted up with a mur­der charge]  The Appeal Court heard the appeal on 13 February 1992 and quashed the jury’s major­i­ty deci­sion. Thomas was imme­di­ate­ly released from prison. See The fab­ri­ca­tion of evi­dence against Ira Thomas/​at the link pro­vid­ed above.

But there is more, it is impor­tant to bring some of these facts to light after the for­mer Immigrant Les Green attempt­ed to slime the natives in the for­mer Colony. According to the report­ing, there was a sig­nif­i­cant amount of at least low-lev­el cor­rup­tion at Begravia Police Station at the time. Belgravia Police Station is close to Harrods, owned by Al-Fayed. Al-Fayed did favors for Begravia-based police offi­cers. Police offi­cers returned the favors. Indeed, there was already an anti-cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tion at that time into the so-called ‘Hamper Squad’, a group of Belgravia-based offi­cers who would arrest and harass any­one, includ­ing his own employ­ees, sus­pect­ed of aid­ing and abet­ting his bit­ter busi­ness ene­my, Lonrho tycoon ‘Tiny’ Rowland. The greedy offi­cers had a con­tin­u­ous sup­ply of free ham­pers and huge dis­counts on Harrods goods. Indeed, one hon­est offi­cer, Bob Loftus, gave the anti-cor­rup­tion unit the actu­al names of police offi­cers who had accept­ed these bribes. No police offi­cer, how­ev­er, was ever pros­e­cut­ed for these crim­i­nal offenses. At the time, Al-Fayed owned the now-defunct satir­i­cal mag­a­zine, Punch. Officers also leaked details of the Dando inves­ti­ga­tion to Punch, prompt­ing a leak inquiry.  .….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….….…… I won­der how Les Green could have missed these acts of cor­rup­tion? Even more sig­nif­i­cant, how could Hamish Campbell not be aware of these crimes being com­mit­ted by his col­leagues at the Begravia station?

But Hamish Campbell, whose career has more ques­tion marks than answers, is in Jamaica as we speak. His job as Assistant Commissioner of INDECOM is to weed out dirty cops from the JCF.  Now, remem­ber that as the Investigating offi­cer, Hamish Campbell’s inves­ti­ga­tions sud­den­ly turned up a speck of firear­m’s residue said to have been ‘found’ in a coat pock­et that oth­er offi­cers had already searched thor­ough­ly in a case which was seven(7) months old when he took over the Investigations. Either Hamish Campbell is a supe­ri­or super sleuth or Hamish Campbell has skele­tons in his clos­et we need to unearth. If the Jill Dando inves­ti­ga­tions are any­thing to go by, the arrest and con­vic­tion of an inno­cent man and his sub­se­quent exon­er­a­tion, then the lat­ter inter­pre­ta­tions about Hamish Campbell is more on point. Barry Bulsara was alleged­ly [fit­ted up], British lex­i­con, for fram­ing an accused, in a case in which Hamish Campbell was the chief inves­ti­gat­ing offi­cer. Barry Bulsara was acquit­ted after spend­ing 7 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. What part if any, did Hamish Campbell play in fit­ting up Barry Bulsara?

Hamish Campbell is now a Deputy Commissioner of INDECOM, one of the many agen­cies tasked with over­sight of Jamaica’s Security Forces. I fun­da­men­tal­ly believe Terrence Williams is a pseu­do [tit­u­lar] head of INDECOM. I believe that he is at the helm of INDECOM because it would seem too much of an, in your face insult to the nation to bring in an immi­grant(Hamish Campbell), and make him head of a gov­ern­ment agency. Terrence Williams polit­i­cal affil­i­a­tions and his bel­li­cose anti-police per­sona, makes him the ide­al can­di­date to be a tit­u­lar head. Nevertheless, we have seen noth­ing in the Career path of Hamish Campbell which would cause the Jamaican Government to bring him in and make him an inves­ti­ga­tor and deci­sion mak­er over our police sol­diers and cor­rec­tions officers.

The recent deci­sion of a sev­en-per­son jury in the supreme court last week to free two police offi­cers inves­ti­gat­ed and charged By Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell seems in line with Hamish Campbell’s history. Which is to man­u­fac­ture evi­dence, coerce wit­ness­es to lie and to con­coct false evi­dence on which to [fit-up] inno­cent peo­ple for crimes they have not committed.  Quite inter­est­ing­ly INDECOM seems to now have a fas­ci­na­tion with firearm residue and have gone to great lengths to bring in for­eign so-called experts. While the police defen­dants and their legal teams have no pow­er or resources to vet their resumes.  With close to 2’000 homi­cides each year in Jamaica the Jamaican Government brings in zero for­eign experts to con­vict the murderers. INDECOM brings in for­eign experts to tes­ti­fy in an effort to try and con­vict our hard work­ing poor­ly com­pen­sat­ed police officers. Long before the so-called [death squad] case was even brought, we received numer­ous reports that INDECOM was induc­ing and coerc­ing alleged wit­ness­es to lie in order to con­vict the officers. Clearly, a jury saw through the lies and those sev­en Jamaicans sent a pow­er­ful mes­sage for jus­tice and the rule of law. Unfortunately for Jamaica, Terrence Williams and Hamish Campbell are still in their jobs. Neither of these hacks has been sched­uled to answer for what occurred with the evi­dence in this case. This Administration and the one it suc­ceed­ed has insist­ed that INDECOM is answer­able to a select com­mit­tee of the Parliament.  We have seen no evi­dence that either Terrence Williams or Hamish Campbell will be hauled before that com­mit­tee to explain the alle­ga­tions which have swirled around this par­tic­u­lar inves­ti­ga­tion from day one. The jury has done its job, but don’t hold your breath for the politi­cians to do theirs.