$300m Tivoli bill - Figure set to increase with suits pending; public defender laments continued abuse of young men by cops, soldiers
Published:Sunday | May 24, 2020 | 12:00 AMLivern Barrett - Senior Staff Reporter
Ten years after the 2010 Tivoli Gardens incursion, there has been no systemic changes within the Jamaican security forces to ensure there is no repeat of the catastrophic events, one state agency has asserted.
Compensation payouts for the death and destruction that occurred during the internal security operation to arrest drug lord Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke have already cost taxpayers a little over $300 million, a figure that will increase when over two dozen lawsuits filed on behalf of detainees are wrapped up.
Days of anxiety and tension over a request by the United States (US) Government for Coke’s extradition came to a head on May 24, 2010. The then Bruce Golding-led Government gave local authorities the go-ahead to process the request after a nine-month stalemate with Washington over the process used to obtain some of the evidence against Coke.
Delroy Chuck, Jamaica’s justice minister since 2016, disclosed that the Government is examining the Extradition Act, but said it has not yet come up for a total review.
Despite this, Chuck said his position on the issue is very simple. “No extradition [request] has lasted more than 24 hours on my desk.”
Hundreds of police and soldiers were met with fierce resistance from armed thugs recruited by Coke when they tried to enter his Tivoli Gardens enclave to arrest him on an extradition warrant.
A diary retrieved from slain gangster Cedric ‘Doggie’ Murray after he was killed in a police operation in Clarendon on August 10, 2010 provided a window into the intensity of the hours-long firefight.
‘Raging Gun Battle’
“Gunshots rang out from every corner of west Kingston and other places … to protect the Don of all Dons, Christopher Coke, AKA-Dudus,” one diary entry read.
“It was a raging gun battle, a day I won’t forget and such tragedy for Jamaica. I escape, one of the last from where I was under crazy gun fire, but God, grace, mercy brought me out untouched,” he wrote.
When the dust cleared, 69 civilians and one soldier were confirmed dead and several houses destroyed in what Public Defender Arlene Harrison Henry has described as the modern-day equivalent of the 1865 “massacre” during the Morant Bay rebellion.
“Sixty-nine dead, compensation having been offered and paid by taxpayers, there has been no accountability within the JCF (Jamaica Constabulary Force) or the JDF (Jamaica Defence Force) for deaths or property damage,” Harrison Henry told The Sunday Gleaner during an interview last Friday.
“It has been business as usual. There has been no change of culture,” she insisted.
Nearly a month after the operation, Coke was apprehended along the Mandela Highway in St Catherine, in a vehicle driven by the Reverend Al Miller. The founding pastor of Fellowship Tabernacle church declined an interview for this story.
Miller was convicted in 2016 for attempting to pervert the course of justice – a charge related to Coke’s capture – and later detailed, during an interview with The Gleaner, how he was contacted by associates of the drug lord who requested his assistance to take Coke to the US Embassy in St Andrew.
A commission of enquiry, which investigated a number of issues around the operation, concluded that there was compelling evidence to suggest that members of the security forces engaged in extrajudicial killings, and used strong language to criticise the actions of police and military commanders.
“The most significant and worrying feature of our enquiry was the fact that the JCF did not acknowledge responsibility for any civilian deaths whatsoever,” the panel of three commissioners wrote in their 2016 report.
“The time has surely come to usher in a radical new culture in the operations of the security forces, a culture that provides for greater transparency and accountability,” suggested the commission, which was chaired by former Barbados Chief Justice Sir David Simmons.
While not discounting the importance of the commission of enquiry, commissioner of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), Terrence Williams, believes it “has proven to be an ineffective route if you want to punish or put before the court those who are individually responsible”.
“The commission of enquiry process is better for institutional problems, to uncover institutional problems, but not for individual problems,” he reasoned.
The report by the Simmons commission included a raft of proposals aimed at improving the process of accountability within the JCF and the JDF. Among them was that both forces conduct separate administrative reviews of the conduct of five senior cops who were singled out for criticisms.
It was also recommended that the JCF gradually change out its weapon system to develop an armoury of weapons that are more traceable; phase out from general use weapons that are not traceable; adopt a same-person, same-weapon policy; and develop a system to ensure that all firearm-related violations and the related disciplinary actions or inaction be noted on the personal files of the offenders.
Repeated calls to police spokesperson, Senior Superintendent Stephanie Lindsay, for the JCF’s position on the recommendations went unanswered.
In 2017, the JCF conducted an internal review of the 2010 operation, which cleared the five cops singled out by the commission of any wrongdoing.
“The [Simmons] commission did not identify any specific act of dereliction of duty or misconduct on the part of any of the named officers,” the review committee said in a report on its findings.
“Therefore, it is the view of the [police internal] committee that no basis existed for the adverse findings and comments [in the Tivoli report] and [we] see no reason why the named officers should not be allowed to continue to serve.”
Missed Opportunity
The public defender believes the JCF missed an opportunity for introspection and meaningful reforms.
“The JCF arrogated to itself appellate powers to sit in review of the commission of enquiry. That is not what they were asked to do,” Harrison Henry said.
She pointed out that in August 2017, her office wrote to the attorney general, asking that the JCF be directed to withdraw the report “forthwith”, but has received no response to date.
She noted that under the existing states of public emergency, the security forces continue to detain large numbers of young men in mainly inner-city communities.
Over 10,000 persons were detained, some for up to one week, in makeshift holding areas established in west Kingston and at the National Arena during the internal security operation in Tivoli Gardens.
“The detentions that we presently see seem to be an inherent, ingrained modus operandi of the security forces, that there seem to be some magic in detaining vast sums of primarily young people, and they are primarily young men,” she said.
She disclosed that the Government has agreed to pay each individual up to $100,000 per day to settle 29 lawsuits filed on behalf of persons who were detained during the operation. The Office of the Public Defender is still trying to locate 15 persons on whose behalf lawsuits were filed.
Months after the operation ended, the Government, through the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, paid compassionate grants totalling $112 million to residents of west Kingston for property damage and to assist with burial costs.
In December 2017, in keeping with a recommendation by the Simmons commission, Prime Minister Andrew Holness apologised, in Parliament, to the people of Tivoli Gardens. He said the May 2010 incursion was a very expensive lesson for Jamaica, “but I believe that we are learning the lesson”.
“We are truly sorry for the pain and loss that occurred,” said Holness.
Cabinet later accepted the recommendation of a committee appointed by the Government – also in keeping with a proposal by the Simmons commission – that $200 million in compensation be paid to relatives of those killed in the operation as well as those who were injured or suffered property damage.