THE EDITOR, Sir:
On the 14th of March last, the nation was subjected to the horror of the slaughter of seven young men in a two-bedroom house on 5th Seal Way in Braeton Phase III by a heavily armed contingent of five dozen members of the elite force given the deceptive title of the Crime Management Unit.
The police allege, firstly, that two or three of the slain men were believed to have been involved in the murders of Constable Gibbs at the Above Rocks police station and school principal Keith Morris. These allegations, if true, suggest that those involved were pretty bad eggs and needed to be swiftly dealt with according to law, but they were unproven and, more importantly, in a society governed by the rule of law, vigilante justice by the members of the institution engaged to keep the peace and maintain law and order is absolutely intolerable. The killings have been justified on the over-rehearsed ground that the seven men had shot at the police with three revolvers and a home-made shotgun and had been killed in the shoot-out when the sixty policemen surrounding the house returned the fire. The assertion is ludicrous and hardly worth debating. Some commentators in an effort to be fair to the CMU have argued that even if as according to SSP Adams, there was a shoot-out, they could have used tear gas to subdue the men inside. Veteran journalist, Ken Chaplin, in a recent article points out that his police sources admitted to him that they had not taken any teargas with them. Why lug around additional equipment that you have no intention of using?
Although I am a member of two human rights organisations that have demanded an independent enquiry into the killings, I know that an independent inquiry is an exercise in futility. There are some that are above the law. That is the unstated premise upon which the Crime Management Unit was created, as were its precursors. Consider then, the likely reaction in the unlikely event that even one member of the CMU had to face criminal or disciplinary charges arising from one of their sorties. It would surely be regarded as an act of gross betrayal.
And while I am on the subject, has anyone heard a peep about the result of the investigation into the slaying of Punky from Jacques Road in or around April last year? Do you think we will ever get one, or confirmation of what was seen and heard on the video-tape?
Dr. Jepthah Ford, in his recent conversation with Wilmot Perkins, repeatedly said, as if in a state of shock, "The police are out-of-control". He is right, of course, and especially so in relation to the special squads which have been copiously established by both political parties. But they have been out-of-control for over 20 years, and reining them in, if even the need to do so was recognised, would take greater political courage than either the PNP or the JLP possess.
There can be no doubt that government is responsible for having created a monster that has taken over 3.5 thousand lives over the last 20 years It must be obvious to every thoughtful person that the high number of police executions is, to a great extent, responsible for the extraordinary murder rate. Yet our politicians appear to be oblivious to this fact and more concerned with creating illusions by legerdemain. Thus they continue to employ a method of fighting crime that does little more than aggravate crime.
It is worth pointing out that between 1981 and 1985 the ratio of police killings to murders was one to two (1:2). Our would-be gunmen are fast learners and they have great teachers. I have little hope that we will see any appreciable change in present practice within the foreseeable future. For the last forty years we have sown the wind; it is my dread that we shall, inevitably, and in the not too distant future, reap the whirlwind.
I am etc.,
DENNIS V. DALY
E-mail: dvdaly@jol.com.jm
