How Jamaican Police Get Away With Murder

No police officer has ever been effectively convicted of murder. In the few cases where a jury might find the defendant guilty, these conviction have been overturned on Appeal.

Men have been crammed into cells at police stations until they smothered. Bodies have been recovered of men last seen alive entering police jeeps. Children, women, have been shot and killed.

Police officers will be charged, attend court.

But trials require actual evidence. Evidence that can be believed.

There is a difference between a high profile murder trial resulting in a conviction and such being overturned on Appeal.

The public may avidly follow the trial, then rejoice that a police officer has been convicted of murder. Amnesty International can feel justified.

Then, a year or two later, the conviction is reversed by the Court of Appeal.

By this time, most people forgot about the case, and the results might not be mentioned by the media.

On July 31st, Television Jamaica began its newscast with a warning that what was about to be broadcast was not suitable for children, then rolled the video taken by a cell phone camera.

The video was brief.

A man lay on the ground.
A uniformed police officer hit him with a baton at intervals. A plains clothes detective, holding a gun, walks around to face the man. Then shoots him in cold blood.

The video ends.

The Constabulary Communication Network, (CCN) unaware TVJ had this video, had issued a release in the afternoon claiming that a man with a knife attacked four police officers and was shot dead.

This is the most important factor in the murder.

The CCN; the official mouthpiece of the Constabulary Force, issued its usual lie. TVJ, showing more courage than any other media house has ever done, ran the video, then read the 'official' report.

Shortly after, pants well around his ankles, the Commissioner of Police called TVJ and claimed that the police who murdered the man on that video would be arrested and charged.

Without that video, without TVJ's broadcast, that police man would never have been arrested.

In 99% of the cases in which a police officer is charged with murder he is acquitted.

This is not basic corruption. This is because so called witnesses lie.

Jamaicans tend to lie about anything and everything without effort. They tend to add details.

Many do not speak nor understand English. 'Patwa' has been pushed as 'fi wi langwij' (our language). It has a limited vocabulary.

Taking the stand against the police, the witness gives their evidence, and begins embroidering and doesn't stop until covering the court room in a quilt.

Sisters have 'seen' police standing over their brother firing shots into his body, when the closest the police officer could have been was sixteen feet away, (by the medical evidence.)

Burglary victims have positively identified the defendant, who, it is later proven, was in prison at the time.

Mothers have announced what a saint their son was, then police records, arrest warrants and bail applications are put into evidence.

The jury, hearing the eye witness so convincingly lie during the examination in chief, now discards the testimony in total.

The Police know this.

The Police, as anyone who has to deal with Jamaican society, knows this.

The Police know they can murder a man in front of his mother because when she comes to give evidence she will lie.

And lie.

Her lies destroy her credibility.

When the police officer's lawyer addresses the jury it will sound something like;

"This woman has testified that she saw this police man,
out of a clear blue sky, walk up and kill her son in cold
blood for nothing."

"Does this sound truthful to you?"

"Remember how she swore her son had never been
in trouble before, but we submitted the various warrants
for his arrest and that she had stood bail for him on a
charge of shooting with intent, illegal possession of a firearm.."

"Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury, if this woman
can take the Bible in her hand, swear to tell the truth,
and lie about her son being such a Saint, can we
believe her when a policeman's life is at stake?"

"Can we believe this proven liar when she concocts
a ridiculous story about a policeman killing her son
in broad daylight, in cold blood?"

And the jury, which has been annoyed by the lies they were fed, the senselessness of the mother's story, finds the police man not guilty.

A man is dead. Dead by police bullet. But the eye witness is proven liar. The Jury acquits.

In 2006 there was a conviction, and a life sentence for Constable Glenroy McDermott. He walked free in 2017 after an Appeal and the refusal of the Court to retry him.

This pattern is standard.

Kill a man, and if by some quirk the witnesses don't totally discredit themselves on the stand and the jury convicts, sentence him to life imprisonment.

As it takes years to go from arrest to trial, years from trial to appeal, the public forgets about the event. The Police Officer wins his appeal, either freed then and there, or a retrial ordered.

As it takes years for a retrial, by the time it is again before the Court, the public isn't particularly concerned.

This is how it goes in Jamaica.