Bunting wants JCF top brass held accountable for crime wave
Published:Tuesday | August 15, 2023 | 12:09 AMChristopher Thomas/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
FORMER NATIONAL Security Minister Peter Bunting is sharply criticising the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) for failing to ensure accountability for its senior members at a time when Jamaica has recorded 854 murders, more than half of the 1,498 murders recorded for 2022.
Bunting, an opposition senator, made his comments on Sunday while addressing the People’s National Party’s (PNP) St James Southern constituency conference, where Nekeisha Burchell was presented as the party’s standard-bearer.
“This morning, you woke up to your newspaper headline, ‘Predawn hell’. That is referring to scores of people who have been burned out of their homes, and including a taxi driver who was murdered while just sitting in his car in the community. This is the environment we are living in today; this is the environment where, between January and last night, 854 Jamaicans were murdered,” said Bunting.
He was referencing The Sunday Gleaner’s report on Saturday morning’s rampage by gangsters in Gregory Park, St Catherine, which resulted in the shooting death of 28-year-old taxi operator Raneel Haughton. Eleven houses were firebombed during the attack, leaving 47 people, including 27 children, homeless.
“Where is the accountability for the 134 murders in July alone? Where is the accountability? Who has been held to account for this failed performance?” Bunting asked.
“It is symptomatic of the system, as the only persons who are asked to pay and to be held to account [are] the ordinary Jamaicans, the rank and file, the lower-level public servant, those who represent the people in the unions,” Bunting continued.
“Why is it that it is only the corporal and the sergeant and the constable who have accountability? Where is the accountability for the senior ones, those who are earning in the $20-million range, not the man who earning a couple hundred thousand dollars?” he added.
“That is where accountability must start – at the top.”
The former security minister also levelled fresh criticism against last month’s interdiction of Corporal Rohan James, the president of the Jamaica Police Federation, who was cited for remarks critical of the Police High Command at a funeral in July.
James has since filed a lawsuit seeking to have the interdiction quashed.
“In the middle of this crime spiral, who is it the police are ‘strong’ for? The chairman of the Police Federation and the executive of the Police Federation. That is who. Instead of them being out there dealing with the 60 persons who were murdered for this month alone so far, they are ‘strong’ for the Police Federation. Talking about accountability,” said Bunting.
“Every well-meaning Jamaican has said the interdiction of the democratically elected Police Federation chairman is wrong. Yet, weeks have gone by and no move made to deal with that situation. But instead, it leaves the police demoralised and demotivated while the criminals run rampant across this country.”
In addition to the Opposition, human rights group Jamaicans for Justice has voiced its support of James, calling his interdiction “an attack against every rank-and-file member of the force who wants their well-deserved and earned overtime pay.”