Terrence Williams Operated Outside INDECOM’s Mandate For 8 Years/​neither Party Did Anything

In the inter­est of full dis­clo­sure, I am not a lawyer but hav­ing writ­ten dozens and dozens of arti­cles over the years on the fac­tu­al issue that INDECOM does not have the pow­er of arrest over mem­bers of the JCF, the Court of Appeals con­firmed my con­tention in a 2 – 1 deci­sion yesterday.
My con­tention, hav­ing read the INDECOM Act has been specif­i­cal­ly tar­get­ed to the ques­tion of arrests.

The (inde­com) Act A Reckless Law Which Kills Citizens And Police Officers Alike…

There was nev­er any ques­tion that INDECOM has the pow­er to inves­ti­gate what­ev­er it wants under the law but that at the con­clu­sion of those inves­ti­ga­tions the results of those inves­ti­ga­tions must be turned over to the duly con­sti­tut­ed pros­e­cut­ing author­i­ty which is the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions(DPP).

There is noth­ing in that con­cept that hin­ders the Commission from aggres­sive­ly going after tar­gets it deems wor­thy of an inves­ti­ga­tion. What is in ques­tion is the com­mis­sion’s hell-bent desire to arrest and do its own prosecution.
The court in it’s rul­ing said that INDECOM inves­ti­ga­tors can arrest as any Jamaican can under com­mon law.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​i​n​d​e​c​o​m​s​-​a​b​u​s​e​-​o​f​-​p​o​w​e​r​-​c​l​e​a​r​-​a​s​-​d​a​y​-​i​n​-​t​h​i​s​-​c​a​se/

The Commission’s Commissioner insist­ed after the rul­ing that it hard­ly ever arrest any offi­cer but by war­rant. In inter­views giv­en to local Media, the Commissioner went on to say that his offi­cers, only arrest­ed offi­cers under the com­mon law author­i­ty that every oth­er Jamaican has even while con­ced­ing that INDECOM itself does not have any such pow­er of arrest under the law.

International Donors Who Give Money To INDECOM Are Strategic In Their Intent…

To sum up that twist­ed log­ic, the Commissioner is say­ing that even though a mem­ber of the pub­lic may make what is called a cit­i­zens arrests which his agents would and have been doing, INDECOM itself could not back such arrests because it does not have any pow­er of arrest.

For the record, a per­son may only effect a citizen’s arrest when a crime is com­mit­ted in his or her view. INDECOM’s inves­ti­ga­tors sure­ly do not see police offi­cers com­mit­ting arrestable offens­es yet they have unlaw­ful­ly and zeal­ous­ly arrest­ed many officers.
It was that very egre­gious pow­er grab which forced DSP Dyer to resist INDECOM’s aggres­sion and upon con­vic­tion led the fight to show that INDECOM was oper­at­ing out­side its authority.

Facts On The Side Of Those Opposed To (inde­com)

Even as the con­se­quences of this mon­u­men­tal rul­ing set­tles in, I am sure attor­neys for every police offi­cer who have been arrest­ed and charged by INDECOM must be look­ing at fil­ing briefs before the courts to have those cas­es revis­it­ed and reviewed.

THE REAL ISSUE HERE
There is a larg­er issue here which bears seri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion as we look at the body of cir­cum­stan­tial evi­dence which has accrued against INDECOM and it’s Commissioner Terrence Williams in its 8‑year history.
Whatever is in the Act was placed in the Act by the nation’s par­lia­ment, as such who­ev­er, the head of the com­mis­sion is, he or she has a duty and an oblig­a­tion to adhere to the let­ter and spir­it of the law.

JA, Conned Into INDECOM : This Will Be Just As Consequential Or Worse…

The head of the JCF, the Contractor General, and every oth­er Investigative body can only oper­ate inside the frame­works of the respec­tive acts which empow­ers them to act on the Jamaican peo­ple’s behalf.
INDECOM does not seem to under­stand those basic tenets as it’s com­mis­sion­er has unsuc­cess­ful­ly sought to con­sol­i­date pow­ers it does not have through the courts over the years.

After the rul­ing Terrence Williams has indi­cat­ed that it intends to con­sid­er whether to appeal to the Privy Council in London. The Privy Council is the final arbiter for cas­es in coun­tries such as Jamaica which refus­es to rewrite their con­sti­tu­tions and is still hang­ing on to Britains apron strings for no mea­sur­able reason.
The Privy Council has been reluc­tant to hear cas­es from the for­mer British colonies but the larg­er issue is the cost of this action being contemplated.

Which brings us full cir­cle to the fund­ing of INDECOM which I wrote about just this week. INDECOM and its offi­cers seem to believe that they are above the laws. More Importantly, the Commission does seem to believe its pow­ers super­sedes that of the Parliament which draft­ed and passed the Law they are enforcing.

In oth­er words, the tail seems to be wag­ging the dog and the dog is eeri­ly silent.
It was Bruce Golding who gave the nation this law, to be fair, the PNP was equalling com­plic­it in col­lud­ing with the JLP by pass­ing this bill into law that defies intel­lect and ratio­nal reasoning.
The loop­holes in the law defy creduli­ty and caus­es one to won­der whether there was any inten­tion to exer­cise leg­isla­tive maturity.
The desired intent of the law was appar­ent­ly to have a law which was hyper inju­ri­ous to the Police with­out con­sid­er­ing that any offi­cer would chal­lenge its legitimacy.

This pub­li­ca­tion was born out of that travesty.
I have con­sis­tent­ly sought to bring to the atten­tion of the Jamaican peo­ple the sim­ple fact that this INDECOM act as it is con­fig­ured is both uncon­sti­tu­tion­al to offi­cers and dead­ly con­se­quen­tial to their peace and security.
Not only has Terrence Williams long over­stepped his author­i­ty in mak­ing ille­gal arrests and dis­arm­ing offi­cers of their weapons and lying about it, as has been estab­lished in the Appellate Court’s rul­ing but he has con­sis­tent­ly over the years aligned him­self with lob­by groups which are dia­met­ri­cal­ly opposed to the Police.

In so Doing Terrence Williams has placed him­self square­ly in a con­fronta­tion­al posi­tion with the police for no clear rea­son. His bla­tant advo­ca­cy and agi­tat­ing both in the courts and in the media has been a con­stant sta­ple over the life of the neo­phyte agen­cy’s life­time and far out­paces his man­date which is to investigate.
The Police have long called for the fir­ing of Terrence Williams but the Bruce Golding Government laughed and kept him in place with the bless­ings of the PNP.

Not only have they not fired Williams who clear­ly is more unnec­es­sary trou­ble than worth to the Jamaican peo­ple, they gave him a sec­ond term.
The Andrew Holness Administration though ful­ly con­ver­sant that Williams is oper­at­ing out­side of the law have not moved to remove him from office.
Ultimately the mem­bers of the Security Forces must seek redress in the courts, all the way to the Privy Council if nec­es­sary to get mon­e­tary redress which unfor­tu­nate­ly will be borne by the Jamaican taxpayers.

Over the years a few Jamaicans have set aside their blink­ers and called for a clip­ping of Williams’ wings, yes­ter­day the DPP joined that call. I wel­come their epiphany albeit 8‑years late.
This agency has become a major prob­lem in our coun­try and is cer­tain­ly not val­ue for mon­ey. The real­ly fright­en­ing thing is that almost half of INDECOM’s bud­get is pour­ing into the coun­try from out­side inter­ests, $230.616 mil­lion for 2016/​2017 and $353.35 mil­lion for 2017/​2018.
That’s a hell of a lot of mon­ey and no one is ask­ing what are they get­ting for it?