Why Does INDECOM Feel Obligated To Issue Press Releases?

One would have thought that with the depar­ture of Terrence Williams from INDECOM, the new Commissioner Hugh Faulkner would have come to the Agency clear-eyed and ful­ly con­ver­sant of the role the agency must play in main­tain­ing trust between the cit­i­zen­ry and the people.
At the same time, INDECOM is oblig­at­ed not to erode trust, or worse, cre­ate mis­trust of the secu­ri­ty forces, keep­ing in mind the com­pli­cat­ed job they have in a vio­lent, crime-rid­den society.
Unfortunately, like so many facets of Jamaican life, INDECOM has cho­sen to engage in hype over sub­stance, spot­light over results.
It is shock­ing that an agency that has no rea­son to be speak­ing to the media about what it is tasked with doing, falls over itself to put infor­ma­tion into the pub­lic space when it was­n’t even asked to, and ends up putting lies into the pub­lic space.
Not only have INDECOM con­tin­ued Terrence Williams’s cru­sade of lies dis­in­for­ma­tion and dis­uni­ty, but it has also clear­ly decid­ed on ani­mus rather than cohesion.
Like moths to a fire­ball, INDECOM is drawn to the spot­light and for no oth­er rea­son than to be divi­sive. What they seem to for­get is that when you seek the spot­light, you may have to con­tend with more heat than you bar­gain for.
Under Terrence Williams’ lead­er­ship, INDECOM cre­at­ed and stoked the embers of dis­cord between the pub­lic and the police for a decade until the Jamaican peo­ple’s eyes opened to the con­se­quences of what INDECOM and Terrence Williams were doing.
In the end, Terrence Williams bowed out like a chas­tened mon­grel, tail between its legs, much like Carolyn Gomes was dis­cred­it­ed and exposed for her lies as head of JFF, the for­eign-fund­ed anti-Jamaican, anti-police agency that has been a dri­ver of vio­lent crimes in our country.
There is no les­son learned by Faulkner or his under­lings. The glare of the spot­light is too great, so they have clear­ly decid­ed to walk right into the flames that will engulf them, rather than do the damn job they are paid to do and shut their mouths.
After the police quick and deci­sive action on May 10^th, the police accost­ed a car trans­port­ing men who had just mur­dered a busi­ness­man in the Swallowfield com­mu­ni­ty after rob­bing him.
Two of the men were killed in a shootout, and anoth­er was arrest­ed. However, before the facts could be ful­ly ascer­tained, INDECOM issued press releases.

(INDECOM, in a release, indi­cat­ed its intent to inves­ti­gate the inci­dent and not­ed that there had been spec­u­la­tion, con­fu­sion, and inac­cu­ra­cy in the initial reports, which require clar­i­ty. “The details of the cir­cum­stances of the dis­charge of weapons were under exam­i­na­tion,” )said INDECOM.
INDECOM is under no oblig­a­tion to issue any press release; it is not a law-enforce­ment agency; it is an OVERSIGHT agency tasked with [inves­ti­gat­ing alleged misconduct].
Even if there are alle­ga­tions of mis­con­duct, the agen­cy’s mis­sion as autho­rized by the bil­ly goats that make up the par­lia­ment, is to inves­ti­gate, not to spec­u­late. Not to add legit­i­ma­cy to false asser­tions aimed and hurt­ing the police.
But that is exact­ly what the agency did, and the police pushed back against the misinformation.
However, no les­son was learned, INDECOM was again forced to take down lies it post­ed to its web­site alleg­ing that offi­cers who should have attend­ed and sub­mit­ted affi­davits to its offices did not do so.
Instead of mak­ing a phone call, they put lies on their site, aimed specif­i­cal­ly at harm­ing the offi­cers involved and the JCF as a whole.
What is wrong with pick­ing up the phone and ask­ing,” hey gen­tle­men, we were sup­posed to meet; what’s hap­pen­ing”?
That would be too respect­ful, too ami­ca­ble; there would be no val­ue derived from being civ­il when the objec­tive is to taint through lies and disinformation.
Unfortunately for the patho­log­i­cal liars who can’t even run their own pathet­ic lit­tle ship, they nev­er both­ered to check to see if the offi­cers were in their own offices before pub­lish­ing the lies.
The offi­cers had receipts indi­cat­ing that they [did] attend, it was INDECOM’s own incom­pe­tent so-called inves­ti­ga­tors who were not there to take the affidavits.
INDECOM was quick to report to the media that the three offi­cers would be charged crim­i­nal­ly for not attend­ing their offices in September of last year. Still, they nev­er issued an apol­o­gy to the offi­cers for it’s lying and incompetence.
Instead, accord­ing to the Observer, INDECOM issued a release stat­ing that the three cops will not be sub­ject to pros­e­cu­tion for the alleged breach and have since attend­ed its offices to be interviewed.
No men­tion that they fucked up in their glee to be the big boss, no apol­o­gy to the offi­cers or the JCF.
Nothing.
Over the ten years that INDECOM has been in exis­tence, there is no secret that I abhor that agency, not because it is not need­ed, but because of the way it was struc­tured and allowed to operate.
Consequently, the way it has been allowed to oper­ate crime has all but inun­dat­ed the small island of 2.8 million.
Repeated calls from this medi­um have gone unheed­ed despite the thou­sands who have died because of what INEDCOM is allowed to do.
There have been no fix­es to the agency, even with the increas­es in vio­lent crimes and thou­sands of Jamaicans’ deaths because the police are afraid of the per­se­cu­tion and witch-hunt when they go after the killers.
Now we know that there isn’t even a media pol­i­cy writ­ten into the INDECOM act that would restrain these dis­sem­i­na­tors of lies from run­ning to the media instead of doing their damn jobs.
At the same time funds con­tin­ue to flow in from Canada, England, and the United States to fund this Trojan Horse.

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.