A painful year of silence

About 6:30 a.m. on August 13, 2022, Linval Williams was packing goods into the trunk of his vehicle at his gate as he prepared to sell his produce in and around his community of Windsor Castle, St Mary.

Without warning, his Saturday morning routine was violently disrupted when a car reportedly driven by an off-duty cop slammed head-on into Williams’ parked automobile.

The impact sent the 66-year-old hurtling through the trunk and landing in the front of his car. His car was also pushed to the other side of the road.

Paralysed from the chest down, he spent seven days in the hospital before succumbing to the injuries.

It has been a difficult 16 months since the tragedy for the family, but his son, Craig Williams, is determined to keep fighting for justice, armed with footage of the accident, which was captured on CCTV.

The policeman – a constable attached to the Office of the Commissioner of Police – is yet to be charged despite a ruling from the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (ODPP) recommending a charge of death by dangerous driving, which carried a maximum sentence of five years under the Road Traffic Act in force at the time of the crash.

A police source told The Sunday Gleaner that no one wanted to take up the case initially. The source believes this is because a police officer was involved, but is adamant that this is “not supposed to happen as no one is above the law”.

It was a reluctance that Craig said he started witnessing since the very day of the accident. And he believes the uphill battle he has since faced in trying to get information on the case chalks up to delay tactics.

This has amplified the grief from the sudden death of their breadwinner and well-known “community man”, Craig said.

“It makes me feel like Jamaica is not really a place for people to live, and the police force is not really a force that is for good,” a dejected Craig told The Sunday Gleaner last week.

Craig explained that after the accident, the family went to the Highgate Police Station in St Mary to make a report. By then it was late at night and they were told to return the following day, but Craig said he insisted on making the report that night as his father was in a critical condition.

SCENE REVISITED

He was then informed that the officers had finished processing the scene of the accident and there was nothing left to be done. However, he said this rhetoric changed after he showed officers at the station footage of the accident. He was then told that the scene would be revisited the following day.

“Further to this, we found out that the third party that was driving the car was actually a police officer, who declared himself to be a police officer when the police came on the scene of the accident,” Craig said.

The investigations also reportedly revealed that the vehicle being driven by the cop was neither registered nor insured. This has caused even more distress for the family, who are unable to receive any form of insurance payout.

“We learnt that after the accident happened, he went online and did the renewal of his policy, so they could not cover the accident because he wasn’t insured at the time of the accident,” he said.

Months later, Craig said he was informed that a case file was sent to the ODPP for a ruling.

In May, he called to find out the status of the ruling.

“They said that based on the information I gave them, the police officer’s name and my father’s name, they said that there is no case file there bearing those names,” the son disclosed to The Sunday Gleaner.

GIVEN THE RUNAROUND

After this roadblock, Craig sought the advice of a lawyer, who directed him to the Inspectorate and Professional Standards Oversight Bureau (IPROB) of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). This was after he had previously written to IPROB as well as the commissioner’s office enquiring about the case, but did not get a response.

In July, he visited the office of IPROB to make a report, and weeks later, he said he was informed by an investigator there that the case file was at the ODPP.

In September, he enquired about the ruling from the ODPP.

“I gave them the same information and this time, they said, ‘Yes, a ruling was made and the file was sent to the office that sent the case file to us’. … They said they could not tell me what is in the ruling; I would have to call IPROB to find out what is there,” he said.

He did as was directed, but was told by IPROB that the case file was not with them and he was redirected to the commissioner’s office.

Exhausted by the runaround, he persisted, making the required calls from one department in the JCF to the next in a desperate search for answers.

“I was saying that it doesn’t really make any sense because it sounds like you’re just taking me through a cycle and I am not getting any update at all, and I know that if I call the commissioner’s office, there’ll be nothing coming from them,” he said.

“At first I thought that the reason that the case file was not at the ODPP in the first place was that they were trying to probably just discard the file. If we never actually went to IPROB in July, the case would not have been sent to the ODPP. I think they were just trying to look out for their colleague and just don’t really care. There is no remorse [for] what happened, and despite them seeing all of what happened, because it’s on video, it’s like they don’t care.”

‘NOT YET CHARGED’

Director of Public Prosecutions Paula Llewellyn, KC, told The Sunday Gleaner last week that the ruling on the matter was sent back to the police on September 6, 2023.

“We recommended that he be charged for causing death by dangerous driving,” she confirmed.

Meanwhile, Superintendent Bobette Morgan-Simpson, head of the St Mary Police Division, told The Sunday Gleaner that “administrative procedures” have prevented the charge from being laid against the police officer three months after the DPP’s ruling.

“There are some administrative procedures that are taking place right now, and then afterwards, whatever is going to happen will happen thereafter, but he has not yet been charged,” she said.

She was unable to provide a timeline as to when –if at all – the officer may be charged.

Craig, in the meantime, has sought the help of the Office of the Public Defender, which wrote a letter to IPROB, the receipt of which Assistant Commissioner of Police McArthur Sutherland has acknowledged.

“I received it day before yesterday (Wednesday) and an acknowledgement letter was sent back to the public defender,” the IPROB boss told The Sunday Gleaner.

“What I wrote, I wrote to my investigations team and directed that they go to the division where this matter originated and do the paper trail from there … because if I am to believe what he (Craig) is saying, he would have been given some runaround,” Sutherland said.

Speaking generally as his agency is not probing this matter, Hugh Faulkner, head of the Independent Commission of Investigations (INDECOM), suggests that civilians seek legal counsel when facing with challenges obtaining information from the police on matters involving cops.

“One of the best steps they can take is having a lawyer to act in their interest because while INDECOM may investigate [a case] with a view to find out if there is any culpability, there is also [another aspect] that can run simultaneously, a civil process, which would be negligence,” Faulkner told The Sunday Gleaner. “If they are not equipped with the funding for a lawyer, many lawyers would function on a contingency basis, whereby there is a signed agreement as to fees which would arise at the end of the legal process.”

Still relentless, Craig said he will not stop until his family gets justice for his father, who he described as an independent, hard-working man, who loved life, and who was the backbone of their family.

“We’re looking for answers and we want justice because my father actually never went in the path of anybody. My father could have been living today,” he said.

sashana.small@gleanerjm.com