Earl Bartley, Contributor
THE TWO incidents in succeeding weeks in Montego Bay - Canterbury and Flankers - demonstrate the challenges the police often face and why it is important for them to follow proper procedures in all instances.
Police policy governing the use of deadly force is quite straight-forward. Police personnel may only use deadly force if their lives and those of members of the public are in imminent danger. They may not shoot at a fleeing car under any circumstances; and may only shoot at a fleeing gun-toting felon if there is a nine out of ten chance that the fleeing felon is a threat to their lives and the public. Despite these relatively simply rules that all Jamaican police personnel are instructed in as a matter of course, there continues to be questions and frequent public protests regarding the improper use of force by the local police.
SHOOT-OUTS
In 2000 there were 140 killings resulting from the police performance of their duties. In 2001 there were 148 and in 2002, the police killed 137 persons in performing their duties. Going by the average annual number of complaints to the Police Public Complaints Authority, about 20 to 25, or 17 per cent of these killings are challenged by citizens as illegal executions. Many others are often greeted with scepticism by citizens upon hearing the police formulaic recitations 'about gunmen who engaged the police in shoot-outs being injured and pronounced dead upon arrival at hospital'. Generally, because of the absence of witnesses however, the police version often goes unchallenged.
By contrast, New York State which has six times the population of Jamaica and about 50 per cent more violent deaths had only about 10 police killings in 2002, or about 0.006 per cent of all violent killings compared to 14 per cent for our police. Based on their review and examination, both Amnesty International and now the United Nation's Special Rapporteur have opined that the Jamaican police seem to engage in frequent extra-judicial killings. These issues were again raised in the two recent incidents in Montego Bay.
CANTERBURY
At Canterbury, the basic allegations were that the police were held at bay by gunmen armed with high-powered rifles. Canterbury is described as a hillside community with 'one road in and the same one road out'. The gunmen were said to be perched on the hillsides in a strategically better position than the police at the bottom of the hill. Rather than rushing up the hill and risking injury to themselves, and possibly to civilians, from stray bullets, the police quite sensibly decided to wait out the gunmen.
After some eight hours the police moved in, killed three alleged gunmen and over the next few days found eight guns - including five high-powered ones, and several hundred rounds of ammunition.
After Canterbury the police won a lot of plaudits for the professional and effective manner in which they handled that situation. Three dangerous and brazen gunmen who had the temerity to shoot at a police helicopter had being eliminated and several high-powered weapons had being removed from the wrong hands. But there were a number of questions left unanswered by the Canterbury operations, which if they had been pressed, might have avoided the incident at Flankers.
QUESTIONS
Among the questions: since Canterbury is a 'one road in one road out' community, and the gunmen were perched on the hillsides firing down on the police at the foothills, how did the police eventually advance into the community? If the police did not shoot their way up the road as they had being reluctant to do, did the gunmen after seeing they were out-numbered relent and decide to retreat to their homes and play innocent? If the latter, how did the three gunmen end up dead?
The reports do not indicate that the gunmen were shot from the air, since the allegations were that they had kept the helicopters away with high-powered rifle fire; nor do the reports suggest that the police advanced under fire. We are only told that the gunmen were killed in a shoot-out with the police. And while there was in fact shooting during the eight-hour stand-off, the unanswered question is: were the police in imminent danger at the moment when they killed the alleged gunmen?
The mother of one of the deceased charged on Perkins On-Line that her daughter told her that the police had hauled her son out of their house and summarily executed him. If she is telling the truth, that would clearly be another case of extra-judicial killing, which raises the question: were the other two gunmen killed under circumstances in which they were not posing an immediate danger to the lives and safety of the police? More importantly, after Canterbury were the police reaffirmed in their methods by the lack of public scepticism? In short, did Canterbury lead to Flankers one week later?
But the matter does not stop there. What about the mother who complained about her son being summarily executed. Did she not know her son was a gunman as alleged by the police? And if she knew, did she not have a prior responsibility to report him to the police? Really, can we expect the police to behave in an ideal way when we are not behaving as responsible citizens? And, when even more than us, their lives are threatened daily by dangerous gunmen which might cause their instinct to minimise their risk to over-ride their professional training.
FLANKERS
Flankers might have resulted from the mixed signals from Canterbury combining with the police penchant for improper procedure to produce tragedy. Under pressure from the public to be more effective and possibly nervous and edgy from the dangers they face, the police literally seem to have gone ballistic. As is usual in such situations they initially claimed to have recovered guns and to have been involved in a shoot-out. Since that explanation did not wash and only incensed the people of Flankers, the police finally offered an apology.
What the Flankers incident highlighted is the need for the police to utilise proper procedures in all instances. If the police had tried to stop the car properly with their sirens, flashers or bull-horn and ordered the occupants out with their arms above their heads they would have certainly been able to tell the type of persons they were dealing with and avoid a tragedy.
LOTS OF INNOCENT PEOPLE DEAD
Commissioner Forbes must be getting tired of combing through the netherworld of mens rea to determine the intent of his colleagues in their frequent violations of procedures. He must be constantly asking himself, were they showing depraved indifference to the value of human life, or were they being reckless, or tragically mistaken? Either way the results are the same. A lot of innocent people dead and the taxpayers stuck with the bill.
Sometimes you cannot help but feel sorry for our police though, because in many ways Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams was right - we have given them a 'rotten society' to police. One in which crime and criminality flowing from the top of society - especially from the political sphere, has infiltrated and inter-penetrated all levels and institutions within the society.
THE 'GINNAL'
Every society has its anti-hero, that mythical or real character that exists on its dark side. Ours is the 'ginnal' a skanker who steals from you while loafing so you end-up losing both ways. In more ways than one we have been playing 'big ginnal' and 'little ginnal' on each other for the past 40 years, and are now only coming around to the reality that only our country and us have been the losers.
We have been robbing from ourselves while loafing, robbing from the future and our children. Now these children have turned on us with bloody-minded disregard and we are demanding that the police contain them. But the police who have been part of the 'ginnalship' too, have like the rest of us become nervous and edgy by the volatility and high crime in the society while being under tremendous pressure to perform. With 'ginnalship' in their blood, however, they are still looking for a shortcut to achievement only to find it often leads to terrible mistakes.
THE POLICE
But if we all need to recognise that we cannot get ahead by beating each other or beating-up on each other, the police, who are on the cutting-edge of enforcing the law, even more so, has to embody and manifest higher levels of legal conformity and ethical conduct. That is why when they fail - as they did so spectacularly that fateful Saturday night - we have to come down on them hard.
Still, it might help for us not forget, that like them we have been long-running disciples of 'Brer Anancy', and if we did not make the society so edgy, mistakes like that made on Saturday might not have arisen at all.
Earl M. Bartley is a businessman and economist. You can send your comments to adapapa@cwjamaica.com.
