Editorial | Embrace INDECOM’s report

This week’s special report by the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM) on fatal shootings by the police during planned police operations (PPO) is probably discomfiting reading for the brass of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF).

Not only has there been a sharp rise in the number of citizens killed in these encounters over the past four years (the 97 deaths in PPOs up to July were 28 per cent more than for all of 2024), INDECOM in its report to Parliament highlighted many cases where the police’s operational methods were questioned, and, on their face questionable, causing accusations, in some instances, of extrajudicial killings.

Instead of the reflexive recoil that usually marks the JCF’s response to criticisms of the type levelled in this report, Police Commissioner Kevin Blake and his High Command, should thoughtfully review and analyse the document, then move with urgency to implement the several reasonable recommendations made by INDECOM.

These include the High Command reversing its hardened position against deploying some of the constabulary’s available body-worn cameras (BWC) to police on PPOs – and ensuring that they are used. Doing this need not await police’s acquisition of sufficient BWCs to kit out its 8,000 officers whose jobs take them into the streets.

Following INDECOM’s advice would also mean the High Command insisting on the highest quality of planning and leadership, as well as adherence to established protocols for PPOs, followed by robust internal reviews after they are done. This is about maintaining best practices.

At the same time, based on the deficiencies highlighted by INDECOM, the justice ministry must immediately sensitise justices of the peace to ensure that search warrants and similar documents they sign for the police are in conformity with the law. They must ask questions and insist on credible and coherent answers, rather than operate as automatons or by rote.

HOTLY DEBATED

The matter of how the constabulary uses the 750 BWCs it owns is a hotly debated issue in Jamaica on which Commissioner Blake has said the police will not be dictated to. The available cameras are now mostly assigned to officers on public order beats.

However, INDECOM – the agency that investigates shootings by, and complaints of abuse against, the security forces – as well as human rights groups, often complain that incidents involving the police that end in the deaths of civilians are never captured on BWCs. On the handful of occasions when the devices were worn, the officers either forgot to turn them on or didn’t know how to operate them.

But INDECOM is especially concerned at the absence of body-worn cameras from planned operation, which, while representing a relatively small proportion of police interactions with citizens, result in an increasing number of police homicides: 40 per cent of 189 security forces fatalities in 2024, and 51 per cent, or 97 of 190 killed up to July. The 76 people killed in PPOs last year was 217 per cent higher than in 2023. These numbers compare with 10 PPO deaths in 2019, and an annual average of 14 between 2019 and 2021.

“The planned police operation are those firearm events where there has been sufficient time and consideration given to the police operation and the tactics and options to adopt,” INDECOM explained in the report tabled in Parliament on Tuesday.

It added: “Incidents may include stakeouts, arrest/snap raids, execution of search warrants, ambush to interdict robberies. Such ‘event driven’ scenarios all require to be carefully planned and executed and consideration given to different tactical options, the gathering of intelligence and other information, the deployment of correct support equipment and a range of other logistic considerations.”

In other words, it is reasonably expected they would result in fewer casualties.

DECREASE

In fact, INDECOM said that there was a decrease in PPO-related deaths, both in absolute terms and as a percentage of overall police killings, after it introduced a post-event evaluation questionnaire for all PPOs in 2015/16 – from an average of over 20 per cent annually in the pre-questionnaire period, to a low nine per cent in 2019.

“However, since 2022 there has been a marked and disquieting increase in fatal shootings occurring during PPOs,” the agency said, noting an 591 per cent increase between 2021 and 2024.

The constabulary attributes the rise in casualties in PPOs, and a general spiral in police killings, to officers protecting their lives during attacks from hardened criminals. This is in the context of Jamaica’s high crime environment.

There is no question about Jamaica’s high level of criminal violence, especially murders, notwithstanding gains made against intentional homicides in over the last two years. Murders are down by over 40 per cent in 2025, following last year’s 20 per cent decline.

Nonetheless, the INDECOM report documents too many instances where the conduct of PPOs appear to be lax; where the management of detainees who ended up dead seem to have been loose; where the police seemed, inexplicably, to forgo opportunities to otherwise detain suspects who died during a PPO; and where the supervision of these exercises were not by sufficiently senior officers, or robust enough.

These are hard issues on which the constabulary should act upon if it is to lock-in the gains it made in recent years and fully gain the trust that Jamaicans want to give it.