THE EDITOR, Sir:
RECOGNISING THE concerns ex-pressed by your newspaper on March 5 "US marshals and the law"), I wish to clarify the status of US-Jamaica law enforcement co-operation, and the US Marshals specifically.
The United States Marshals Service has not made plans "surreptitiously" to be stationed in Jamaica. On the contrary, the US Marshals Service will be continuing its extremely successful collaboration with Jamaican law enforcement with Deputy Marshals specifically assigned to perform liaison and training duties with their counterparts in the Jamaica Constabulary Force Fugitive Apprehension Team (JFAT).
Recognising that Jamaica was being exploited as a destination by foreign fugitives, the JCF established the specialised Jamaican Fugitive Apprehension Team (JFAT) in February 2000. As part of the Embassy's agreement with the Ministry of National Security and Justice to provide
support in the training and organisation of JFAT, the Marshals Service opened its office in the Embassy that same month and has since maintained that office.
These liaison and training responsibilities had been performed by visiting Marshals on extended temporary duty and by the Embassy's Security Office. In part, because of the outstanding success of Jamaica's programme, funding has now been approved for individual Marshals to be formally assigned to the Embassy on a permanent basis; this change is primarily administrative in nature, but will provide welcome continuity in the liaison relationship.
According to our own US law, US law enforcement officers working overseas may not, save in the most extraordinary circumstances, participate as law enforcement officers in apprehension operations. Until a fugitive has gone through the entire extradition process and is formally turned over, normally at the airport, to the Marshals do they have authority to detain the individual. While Marshals
may assist their counterparts in the planning and preparation for a fugitive arrest, the actual operations are conducted by JCF personnel only the JCF can effect an arrest in Jamaica.
In the first nine years of the extradition treaty between Jamaica and the United States, it appears that there were only two extraditions; i.e., only two potentially dangerous individuals that had committed crimes in the United States and had fled to Jamaica were apprehended and ordered extradited by the Jamaican courts. In the four years since the JCF JFAT team was established, removals by extradition or voluntary waiving of extradition proceedings by the fugitive have risen to an average of ten per year.
Your own newspaper reported on an example of successful collaboration between the US Marshals and JFAT in January 2002. The United States Marshals Service had announced the capture of fugitive Wayne Anthony Davis, who was wanted for the 1988 shooting of a US police officer in Prince George's County, Maryland. The shooting had been profiled on local television and on the "America's Most Wanted" programme. A tip from a viewer, who had seen the profile on "America's Most Wanted," led authorities to the remote hills of Jamaica, where he was apprehended by the Jamaican Fugitive Apprehension Team. Davis' capture was an excellent example of a co-operative law enforcement effort. When agencies work together like they did in that case, we are able to take more criminals off our streets. We can all be proud of their fine work.
The collaboration between the Marshals Service and the JCF Fugitive Apprehension Team is one of the most successful, high impact programmes between the Ministry of National Security and the Embassy. As the Deputy Chief of Mission of the US Embassy, Richard Smyth recently said, "The word is getting out - Jamaica is not a hospitable place for fleeing or escaped felons from any country."
I am, etc.,
ORNA BLUM
Public Affairs Officer
Embassy of the
United States of America
