Gordon Robinson | What the hell the police can do?

There has been much squabbling over the sharp reduction in murders reported by the police for 2025.

The final number, 673, is the lowest in 30 years which, on the face of it, should be universally celebrated. Instead PNP sycophants use every excuse to trivialize the achievement and Human Rights Groups point to the concomitant increase in police killings as reason to mute celebrations. This calls for clear-headed analysis.

In 2022, murders rose to 1,516 despite much ballyhooed States of Emergency regularly declared from 2018 that only succeeded in squeezing murderers like toothpaste tubes. Their content migrated. Also this short-sighted strategy created more ill will towards security forces. Too many innocent youths were scraped up and detained for months without charge causing untold damage to themselves and families. A landmark Supreme Court ruling eventually declared the SOEs were unconstitutional.

In 2022, there were 134 police killings.

In 2023 murders declined by 8 per cent to 1,406; police killings increased by 16 per cent to 155. Murders declined again in 2024 to 1,147 (down 19 per cent) while police killings increased to 189 (up 22 per cent). In 2025 murders declined by 42 per cent; police killings increased to 311 (up 65 per cent).

From 2022-2025 murders declined by 56 per cent; police killings increased by 132 per cent.

There’s an obvious correlation. But, before we join the popular weeping, wailing and gnashing of teeth over possible human rights violations, we must accept the most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the correlation namely that many of the persons killed by police were also guilty (in reality not in court) of many of the murders since 2018. Any other follow-up would be an egregious exercise in eating your cake and having it.

So here’s the simple issue. Based on Jamaica’s history and current reality, is there another way to reduce murders than police targeting and killing suspected murderers after being “challenged”? The obvious alternative is to arrest and charge them with the murders you can prove; protect witnesses and forensic evidence; convict them; and imprison them where conventional wisdom has it they can’t endanger society.

Let’s honestly interrogate that alternative. Supreme Court publishes general clearance rates (56 per cent in 2025) but no statistics regarding convictions. How many murder convictions were secured in 2022-2025? We don’t know. The data is unavailable. But I suspect nowhere near 110 in 2023 (that year’s decline in murders); 259 in 2024 (murders decline); or 474 in 2025 (murders decline). I suspect murder convictions haven’t even equalled the number of increased police killings during that time (21; 34; 122).

So if you’re waiting for the justice system to help reduce Jamaica’s intolerable murder rates you’re living in a Fools’ Paradise.

Now, let’s look at the justice system from another angle. Decades ago, a Portland landowner was disturbed by loud music from a neighbour’s party. He went next door to complain and shot the neighbour (he said he thought the neighbour was going for a gun). He was convicted of shooting with intent and wounding with intent (separate victims) and sentenced to four years imprisonment. The neighbour survived but was paralysed so sued.

That’s where I became involved. The convict’s wife came to my office and asked me to represent her husband in the lawsuit. I said to her “I’m sorry but where your husband currently resides isn’t a place I visit. I’ll try to hold the plaintiff’s lawyers at bay as best I can until he’s released when he should come and instruct me personally.”

After release, the landowner came to my office. The first thing he asked was “How come I only now seeing you?” I reported my conversation with his wife. He looked surprised “Then she never tell yu?”

“Tell me what?”

“I was hardly ever in that place. You coulda come to my home in Portland and seen me.”

That was long ago. I can only imagine what it’s like now. Then, there were no cell phones. Now a cell phone is aptly named because every prison cell has at least one. “Business” as usual is conducted by phone or word of mouth during visits. In Jamaica’s prisons, like everywhere else in Jamaica, money talks and B.S. walks. As I said decades ago to a former Appeal Court President, to his shock and horror, many convicts sentence themselves. Judges’ sentences are often irrelevant.

On the odd occasion that a conviction is accomplished by excellent police and prosecutorial work after many years, Privy Council is always available to overturn the conviction obtained on unimpeachable evidence because someone tried unsuccessfully to bribe the jury to acquit. Then, as Sykes CJ correctly explained, chronic delays in our “system” of justice ensure no retrial is feasible. Noel Phillips (a.k.a. Echo Minott) made a similar point in 1985:

Me and my girl was fighting.

It happens to be a misunderstanding.

I accidentally t’ump her in she face

and she face black and blue.

She run go to di police station

fi go tell di police fi true.

Gal after mi feed and mi clothes you;

give you everything you want fi comfort you;

leave di house gone go look money fi me and you.

When mi come back you gone with Boy Blue.

T’ump you in a yu yeye and it black and blue

Run go to police go tell dem fi true.

But what the hell the police can do?

Jamaica now has a Chief Justice serious about restructuring the justice system so that at least a facsimile of justice can be delivered. But to extricate justice from the hole in which he found it and to seal that hole to prevent falling in again could take decades.

Over twenty years ago a relative’s watch was stolen downtown. He mentioned it to a businessman with connections to the Area Don. The watch was returned in 30 minutes. He didn’t ask what happened to the thief. But garrison trials were swift; sure; cross-examination techniques efficient at ferreting out truth; and sentences immediately enforced.

While we upgrade official justice, as Echo Minott smirked, what the hell can the police do?

For thirty-five years murders have increased until reaching viscerally frightening levels. Crime’s deep connections to politics; law enforcement; and customs plus a justice system determined to mimic molasses built a complex culture of corruption, incompetence and inefficiency that facilitates murder.

So, yes, the high number of police killings is cause for human rights concerns. Previously intolerably high murder rates were cause for citizen safety concerns. Over three decades it has become painfully obvious that human rights based policing together with justice system failures were never likely to cut murder rates. So you tell me what the hell the police can do?

Lady Junie responded to Echo Minott’s threat:

Me and mi man was fighting

and it wasn’t no misunderstanding.

’Im t’ump me inna mi eye mek it black and blue

so mi go tell di police fi true.

There’re always three sides to every story. Lady Junie’s side:

Man, after me wash and cook fi you

Mi press off yu shirt mek it look bran’ new;

give yu lots of loving that’s romantic fi true.

When mi tek a stock yu gone wid Mary Lou.

Mi puff up mi face get jealous fi true

Mi run go di police fi tell him fi true!

Lady Junie proposes solutions to the human rights/victims’ rights dilemma:

But mi a go tell yu what police can do.

Dem wi wind yu up mek yu move like robot;

box yu in yu face and kick yu inna di gut;

grab yu in di collar and tear up yu shut;

tek out dem weapon give yu bere gun butt;

mek yu understand badmanship it nuh wuk!

These are the real life, complex choices facing a nation currently caught between a rock and a hard place.

Circa 1949, PNP legend Wills O. Isaacs, in response to accusations of involvement in political violence famously retorted “What are a few broken skulls in the building of a nation?” In 1897 British politician, Joseph Chamberlain, a leading conservative imperialist, used an anti-French Revolution phrase coined by French Royalty, to defend colonization in Africa: “To make an omelet you must break eggs”.

So those damning police with faint praise should detail an alternative strategy for an outgunned, out-resourced, out-infiltrated and out of options police force.

Peace and Love.

Gordon Robinson is an attorney-at-law. Send feedback to columns@gleanerjm.com.