Stephen VasciannieABOUT TWO weeks ago, I attended the funeral of Rodney Samuels, a 23-year old colleague murdered by the gun in the prime of his life.
Rodney had attended Kingston College, and while there, had become a member of the school's quiz team for 1997. In his participation in quiz activities, Rodney was thoughtful, careful and sometimes introspective.
He was also a man of dignity: on one occasion, when the quiz team was en route to central Jamaica for a round of practice matches, we stopped to purchase patties at a well-known establishment. The young men -- about 30 Fifth and Sixth Formers -- were quickly into the business at hand, having patties and soft drinks on the parked school bus and sharing thoughts about various matters.
Rodney, however, considered this scene a little unbecoming. He pointed out, calmly and politely, that we all should have assumed proper places in the restaurant in the manner of gentlemen. This roadside business was not for him.
In his church community, Rodney was well known as a child preacher. From the various presentations made by the Adventist leaders at his funeral, it is clear that his impact in this area will be long remembered. Despite -- or perhaps because of -- his youth, he preached with fervour, commitment and great clarity. This, together with his personal attributes of integrity and diligence, brought great joy to his family.
Now, though, he has passed away. Rodney joined the Jamaica Constabulary Force shortly after leaving Kingston College -- and a few weeks ago, he was brutally murdered by persons unknown. A life of great promise reduced to memories; gone far too soon.
STARK REALITY
As I listened to the tributes offered at Rodney's thanksgiving service, I could not help wondering how we came to this sorry pass. For, of course, Rodney is not alone. Policemen are targets for criminals in the society, and at the same time, many in society find themselves marked out as targets by some policemen. Some recent figures bear out the stark reality:
Obviously, these figures raise a number of very difficult issues for the police and the wider society. The murder of each member of the police force is an abomination. The police are frequently on the frontline of the fight against criminals and they risk their lives on a daily basis to preserve or re-establish law and order in various communities. For this we should remain profoundly grateful.
Nevertheless, the fact that police work is inherently dangerous does not give the police licence to act with impunity. This bears emphasis: in the decade beginning 1991, the police killed 1,389 civilians, and 89 policemen lost their lives at the hands of murderers. That is, for every policeman killed, about 15 people were killed by the police.
To me, this disproportion cannot easily be explained away. True, the police are likely to be more highly trained than other persons, so one would expect that in police-civilian confrontations the police may have an advantage. Even so, however, the ratio of 15 to 1 should prompt serious concern. In many reported instances of police-civilian confrontation, the police maintain that they acted in self-defence, but it strains credulity to accept that in so many situations of legitimate self-defence the civilians have ended up dead.
Among other things, the statistics in Table 1 suggest that the State authorities need to be more frank about police killings and police deaths. Some of the police killings are appropriate acts of self-defence, but others are instances of murder by the State -- and the State, therefore, should acknowledge and keep acknowledging that the phenomenon of police murder is a part of our social reality. Until the State acknowledges this fact, some policemen will continue to believe that they have a licence to kill with impunity.
BELEAGUERED
Of course, at a time when we all feel beleaguered by gunmen, some people will be inclined to the view that the police should not be limited in their ability to fight crime. This perspective starts from the assumption that vicious, marauding gunmen recognise no restraints in their attacks on society; so, it is said, the police cannot be restrained in countering the enemy. If gunmen terrorise your community, and if you have lost loved ones to arbitrary murder by gunmen, you will have every reason to feel that it is open season in the fight against murderers.
But here we need to be cautious. For one thing, if the police are given carte blanche to take out murderers, how will we know that persons killed by the police are actually murderers? Return to the statistics above: can we have much confidence in the idea that even 50 per cent of the 1,389 civilians killed were gunmen or murderers? If you believe they all were, consider the following: in 1984, the police killed 355 persons, but that figure has now been reduced to 140 for the year 2000. In 1984, the police no doubt maintained that all, or almost all of their killings were in self-defence. Can we believe that argument for 1984, when the figure for 2000 is so much lower? I hardly think so.
So, even though we may be tempted to give the police a free hand -- and I certainly had that feeling at Rodney's funeral -- this would be a dangerous course of action, for it would lead to the unjustified killing (and the further unjustified killing) of scores, if not hundreds, of Jamaicans. If we believe in the rule of law, then we must insist on the right of the accused to a fair trial and on the presumption of innocence; and, as part of this, we cannot allow the police to become judge, jury and executioner, no matter how trying our present circumstances happen to be.
For another, we need to bear in mind that at least some of the crime and violence that now bedevils urban Jamaica is prompted by social alienation. Many young men, in particular, feel that they are in the society, but not a part it, a feeling that makes them vulnerable to the temptations of drug money and other criminal possibilities.
This feeling of alienation is only exacerbated by the perception that the police cannot, or will not, distinguish between criminals and law-abiding citizens. And so, each time the police kill someone unjustifiably, this builds up a cauldron of anti-police resentment in particular communities. This resentment cannot be addressed simply by giving the police more rope to hang poor people.
I deeply regret my young friend's passing. I hope they find his killer and give him a fair trial; and, if he is found guilty of capital murder, I would not object if they hang him. But, at the same time, the society should not allow the pain of police deaths to take us further down the road of lawlessness.
Stephen Vasciannie is Professor of International Law at the University of the West Indies, Mona.
