Boost police skills to make prosecutions stick – Jackson
Published:Wednesday | November 27, 2019 | 12:00 AMAlbert Ferguson/Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
The Government’s failure to invest in the investigative capacity of the police has hampered probes into violent crime, says Fitz Jackson, opposition spokesman on national security and chairman of the People’s National Party (PNP).
Jackson, who spoke with The Gleaner at the conclusion of Sunday’s National Executive Council (NEC) meeting of the PNP, in Trelawny, said too many cases of alleged criminals and gangsters are being thrown out of court because of insufficient evidence.
Speaking against the background of the recent case in which 19 alleged members of the Westmoreland-based Dexter Street Gang were freed in the Home Circuit Court, in Kingston, because of insufficient evidence. Jackson said that had the police been better equipped with the investigative tools, that case might not have fallen apart.
“It’s unfortunate that we have gone so far and we have not been able to get a successful conviction,” said Jackson, noting that it has been over two years that the Opposition has been calling on the Government to invest money in providing lawyers in the police unit to guide the investigations to shore up cases.
“Look at the low conviction rate with the few that reach court. It is because of the quality of the cases that go before the court why they break down,” added Jackson.
Jackson said that in other jurisdictions, there is collaboration between the investigative and prosecutorial arms of the State to make sure that prosecutions stick.
“Again we beseeched the Government not to be hard-headed and to take the lives of the Jamaican people serious and do the right things ... that common sense dictates,” said Jackson. “We have beseeched the Government to listen and to pursue these, but they have ignored us and the country has now suffered, and the majority of Jamaican people are now living in continuous fear,” said Jackson.
In 2018, during a parliamentary debate, then Minister of National Security Robert Montague said that the Jamaica Constabulary Force would be recruiting 20 lawyers to help police investigators to prepare case files. Delroy Chuck, the minister of justice, was to meet with the attorneys to settle the fees to be paid.