Dear Editor,
Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) strongly endorses the calls and the challenge contained in the letter from Mr Horace Levy published in your newspaper on Sunday, August 18, 2013.
JFJ too has been seriously concerned about the outcomes of far too many police operations where not only have significant numbers of our citizens been killed, but the constitutional and human rights of scores of other citizens have been infringed.
Our concern is further heightened, as clearly all of this could not possibly be the result of new 21st century tactics and strategies by the Jamaica Constabulary Force under the leadership of Commissioner Ellington.
If these are the "new" tactics and strategies, they have led to the appalling statistic highlighted in Mr Levy's letter of 146 persons killed by the police in 2013 up to August 3. At this rate almost 250 persons will die at the hands of the police before the end of this year.
Despite these repressive tactics and appalling rate of fatal shootings "for the past three years police have not been able to reduce the rate of murder from the three per day average to which it fell after Christopher Coke left Tivoli in late May 2010".
In the face of these failing and rights-abusing tactics, the minister of national security, Peter Bunting, has failed to live up to his promise of "a new paradigm" for security. The course being pursued by his ministry, including the dissolving of the Implementation Oversight Committee for the JCF Strategic Review without putting anything in its place, and patently without achieving the goal of a reformed Jamaica Police Service, is very much the old paradigm of top down rule and lack of consultation.
The 19 months of his tenure as minister of national security should have shown him the failings of these strategies.
JFJ supports Mr Levy's call "for Mr Bunting and Mr Ellington to give public response to the facts, points and proposals" he makes. It is past time for the effective implementation of rights-respecting strategies focused on community people development and based on properly institutionalised community-based policing.
To do that requires comprehensive police reform as part of an effective crime prevention strategy involving all relevant stakeholders in Jamaica. We wonder, like Mr Levy, if they can and will rise to the challenge?
Carolyn Gomes
Executive Director
Jamaicans For Justice
Will Messrs Bunting and Ellington rise to Mr Levy's challenge?
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Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ) strongly endorses the calls and the challenge contained in the letter from Mr Horace Levy published in your newspaper on Sunday, August 18, 2013.
JFJ too has been seriously concerned about the outcomes of far too many police operations where not only have significant numbers of our citizens been killed, but the constitutional and human rights of scores of other citizens have been infringed.
Our concern is further heightened, as clearly all of this could not possibly be the result of new 21st century tactics and strategies by the Jamaica Constabulary Force under the leadership of Commissioner Ellington.
If these are the "new" tactics and strategies, they have led to the appalling statistic highlighted in Mr Levy's letter of 146 persons killed by the police in 2013 up to August 3. At this rate almost 250 persons will die at the hands of the police before the end of this year.
Despite these repressive tactics and appalling rate of fatal shootings "for the past three years police have not been able to reduce the rate of murder from the three per day average to which it fell after Christopher Coke left Tivoli in late May 2010".
In the face of these failing and rights-abusing tactics, the minister of national security, Peter Bunting, has failed to live up to his promise of "a new paradigm" for security. The course being pursued by his ministry, including the dissolving of the Implementation Oversight Committee for the JCF Strategic Review without putting anything in its place, and patently without achieving the goal of a reformed Jamaica Police Service, is very much the old paradigm of top down rule and lack of consultation.
The 19 months of his tenure as minister of national security should have shown him the failings of these strategies.
JFJ supports Mr Levy's call "for Mr Bunting and Mr Ellington to give public response to the facts, points and proposals" he makes. It is past time for the effective implementation of rights-respecting strategies focused on community people development and based on properly institutionalised community-based policing.
To do that requires comprehensive police reform as part of an effective crime prevention strategy involving all relevant stakeholders in Jamaica. We wonder, like Mr Levy, if they can and will rise to the challenge?
Carolyn Gomes
Executive Director
Jamaicans For Justice
Will Messrs Bunting and Ellington rise to Mr Levy's challenge?
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