Mt Salem ZOSO under fire - Only 1 out of 582 detainees charged

Police detentions under the first zone of special operations (ZOSO) in Mount Salem have come under scrutiny after it was revealed that one person out of 582 held over a one-year period was charged with an offence.

Seven per cent, or 40, of them were children.

The data were presented to the Office of the Public Defender (OPD) by the police for the period September 1, 2017, to August 15, 2018.

Public Defender Arlene Harrison Henry told a joint select committee examining the ZOSO legislation on Wednesday that the data provided by the police in December 2018 on the 582 persons detained in the St James community did not state the reasons for the detentions.

However, the public defender told the committee that the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF), this week, provided reasons for the detentions, which, in some instances, included serious offences.

Harrison Henry said that there was no indication that anyone was taken before a justice of the peace or parish judge, nor was there any information to show that they had been charged.

“This conduct by the police as recorded in their data causes one to question whether there were any reasonable grounds for the arrests and detentions in the first place,” she said.

Of the 582 people detained in Mount Salem over the one-year period, 44 per cent were between 18 and 25 years old.

The OPD reported that 23 per cent of those detained were between 26 and 30 years old. Another 11 per cent who were held and released fell in the age group 41 to 63.

In Mount Salem, a total of 4,604 houses were searched during the one-year period, but the outcomes were not recorded.

The public defender reminded the committee, now reviewing the ZOSO law, that Section 14 of the act only allows searches “upon reasonable suspicion that an offence is in the course of being committed or has been committed or is about to be committed”.

“The significant numbers of searches yielding nothing, according to the JCF’s records, suggest that searches were arbitrary and contrary to the provisions of the act,” Harrison Henry asserted.

In the troubled Denham Town community of West Kingston, where a ZOSO was declared on October 17, 2017, at least 722 persons were detained nearly a year later in September 2018.

Of this number, six were persons of interest. However, two of the six were processed and released.

Seventy-nine per cent of those detained and arrested were under the age of 31.

Children aged 11 to 17 accounted for 11 per cent of the detainees, while those 18 to 21 represented 27 per cent. Another 25 per cent of those detained were between the ages of 22 and 26.

The public defender also took issue with what the police describe as the “processing” of persons.

According to Harrison Henry, of the 722 persons arrested and detained, 615 were “processed and released” on the same day they were detained.

“There is no definition of ‘process’ under the act, nor is there any explanation in the JCF’s records as to what is involved or done in the ‘process’,” she said.

There is no provision in the act that permits an arrest or detention for the purpose of processing, the public defender insisted.

In relation to the Denham Town ZOSO, the public defender told the committee that data received from the commissioner of police’ s office, dated January 22, 2021, for the period October 2017 to September 2018, were in some cases at variance with information first obtained from the force in 2018.

She said that the new data recorded only the arrest and charge of 144 persons and contained no statistics on the number of persons who had been “processed and released” or any person who had been “interviewed and released”.

The recent data do not provide the ages of those arrested and charged or the periods of detention, she observed.

Harrison said that the data provided by the police under the ZOSOs had not revealed or shown the recovery of firearms or ammunition. She also noted that there was no report of any successful investigation and prosecution of any major crimes.

“From the data supplied, it appears as if the zones have only been effective in collecting information on primarily young people,” Harrison Henry noted.

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