HUNDREDS OF mourners turned out yesterday morning to say farewell to Detective Corporal Joshua Graham who was killed by gunmen two weeks go.
They included Police Commissioner Francis Forbes and other senior officers of the Jamaica Constabulary, Dr. Peter Phillips, National Security Minister, and members of the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica.
There were two funeral services for the slain detective. The first was at St. Mary the Virgin Anglican Church, Molynes Road, Kingston; the second was in St. Mary Anglican Parish Church, Port Maria. He was buried in the Port Maria Cemetery.
At the service in Kingston Cpl. Diane Bartley, general secretary of the Police Federation, cited a television report showing the bullet-riddled body of Det. Cpl. Graham lying on the ground and his eight-year-old daughter, Jodian, sobbing.
"Who will be there now for young Jodian?", she asked.
She spoke about the circumstances in which a colleague was killed by gunmen, witnessed by scores of motorists who were all trapped in a line of traffic, yet nobody had come forward to give a statement. She warned that those who remained silent could become the next victims.
Jodian, Det. Cpl. Graham's only child, paid a tribute to her father. It read in part: "Daddy you have always been there for me and that daddy you have always been a good father."
Cpl. Graham was remembered by his supervisor, Deputy Supt. Colin Pinnock, as a quiet person and somebody who needed no supervision.
Reference was made about the professional manner in which he had investigated the controversial shooting of veteran journalist Hugh Crosskill, Jnr.
Dr. Phillips called on Jamaicans who witness crimes to come forward.
Det. Cpl. Graham was killed on the night of July 2 while he was driving a marked police vehicle. He was in a line of traffic near the intersection of Olivier and Constant Spring roads. Reports are that several men alighted from a car that was behind his vehicle and pumped more than 10 bullets in his body. He died at the scene.
"We want our policemen and women to be the best sharpshooters," Heather Robinson, head of the Police Support Action Committee, said at the funeral, in calling on the Government to speed up the renovation of the firing range at Twickenham Park, St. Catherine, so police could have easier access to sharpening their shooting skills.
Since January 10 policemen have been killed, the last six were gunned down within a month.
