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In Jamaica, grieving father takes on police
Author: Michael Deibert
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 09/28/06 13:33
KINGSTON, Jamaica (IPS) — Barrington Fox carries a photo of his 18-year-old son Joel with him. The picture, portraying a young man with his eyes shielded behind a pair of sunglasses and smoking a cigarette, is all that Fox has since Joel, the youngest of three brothers and a sister, was killed by Jamaican police six years ago.
Arrested and handcuffed by police one early September morning, Joel, who had moved from his family’s home in nearby Bull Bay and began, by his father’s own admission, to run with a tough crowd in Jamaica’s sprawling capital, Kingston, never made it to the police station.
Joel was shot to death en route, a killing a Jamaican court found to be justifiable homicide but which Fox, who cites the fact that his son was handcuffed and that powder burns on the body attested to death at close range, views as little more than a police-sanctioned murder.
“He was accused of a crime,” says Fox, citing the fact that police said his son was found in possession of an illegal weapon. “And I have no problem if the police apprehend him, carry him through the system, go through the courts and have him pay for any crime. But the manner in which it was done ... He was supposed to reach the police station and he ended up dead.”
The killing prompted the elder Fox, a soft-spoken 54-year-old plumber with no prior involvement in politics, to co-found Families Against State Terrorism (FAST), a Jamaican organization that now lobbies for greater police oversight and accountability and judicial reform in this Caribbean country of just under 3 million people.
Fox is not the only one voicing concern. The level of killings by the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is among the highest per capita in the world, with 168 fatal shootings by police in 2005.
Since October 1999, when three officers were convicted of beating a prisoner to death, the country has witnessed more than 800 police killings, many of which Amnesty International characterized as “blatantly unlawful” in a February 2006 report. That same month, the first Jamaican police officer in nearly seven years was convicted of murder for killing a man in 2000 while on duty.
In one of the most notorious incidents, six police officers were acquitted in December 2005 of the murders of two women and two men in the rural village of Kraal in May 2003, despite what human rights advocates charged was strong evidence that the victims were unarmed and that police had tampered with the crime scene. The officer who led the raid, Reneto Adams, at the time commander of the JCF’s Crime Management Unit, later celebrated his release in a rap song and remains employed by the police, though reassigned to a desk job.
“From our point of view the most urgent [human rights problem] in Jamaica is police killings,” said Carolyn Gomes, executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, an organization formed after a hike in gasoline prices in April 1999 prompted three days of rioting on the island which saw nine killed, over 150 arrested and millions of dollars worth of damage to the Jamaican economy.
“We are convinced that a number of them are extra-judicial and nobody is being held accountable for that,” she told IPS.
Although the police say their work is tough and that they are trying to reduce abuses, Barrington Fox remains unconvinced that enough is being done. He was part of a recent delegation that met with Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to ask for an independent investigative body to examine charges of police corruption, abuses and killing. According to those present, the prime minister was unenthusiastic about the idea.
“As long as I live I will continue to speak out against this,” said Fox, motioning to the picture of his murdered son. “I’m not going to stop. This is not just about my son any more, it’s about a system that’s not working, and we need tha
Author: Michael Deibert
People's Weekly World Newspaper, 09/28/06 13:33
KINGSTON, Jamaica (IPS) — Barrington Fox carries a photo of his 18-year-old son Joel with him. The picture, portraying a young man with his eyes shielded behind a pair of sunglasses and smoking a cigarette, is all that Fox has since Joel, the youngest of three brothers and a sister, was killed by Jamaican police six years ago.
Arrested and handcuffed by police one early September morning, Joel, who had moved from his family’s home in nearby Bull Bay and began, by his father’s own admission, to run with a tough crowd in Jamaica’s sprawling capital, Kingston, never made it to the police station.
Joel was shot to death en route, a killing a Jamaican court found to be justifiable homicide but which Fox, who cites the fact that his son was handcuffed and that powder burns on the body attested to death at close range, views as little more than a police-sanctioned murder.
“He was accused of a crime,” says Fox, citing the fact that police said his son was found in possession of an illegal weapon. “And I have no problem if the police apprehend him, carry him through the system, go through the courts and have him pay for any crime. But the manner in which it was done ... He was supposed to reach the police station and he ended up dead.”
The killing prompted the elder Fox, a soft-spoken 54-year-old plumber with no prior involvement in politics, to co-found Families Against State Terrorism (FAST), a Jamaican organization that now lobbies for greater police oversight and accountability and judicial reform in this Caribbean country of just under 3 million people.
Fox is not the only one voicing concern. The level of killings by the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) is among the highest per capita in the world, with 168 fatal shootings by police in 2005.
Since October 1999, when three officers were convicted of beating a prisoner to death, the country has witnessed more than 800 police killings, many of which Amnesty International characterized as “blatantly unlawful” in a February 2006 report. That same month, the first Jamaican police officer in nearly seven years was convicted of murder for killing a man in 2000 while on duty.
In one of the most notorious incidents, six police officers were acquitted in December 2005 of the murders of two women and two men in the rural village of Kraal in May 2003, despite what human rights advocates charged was strong evidence that the victims were unarmed and that police had tampered with the crime scene. The officer who led the raid, Reneto Adams, at the time commander of the JCF’s Crime Management Unit, later celebrated his release in a rap song and remains employed by the police, though reassigned to a desk job.
“From our point of view the most urgent [human rights problem] in Jamaica is police killings,” said Carolyn Gomes, executive director of Jamaicans for Justice, an organization formed after a hike in gasoline prices in April 1999 prompted three days of rioting on the island which saw nine killed, over 150 arrested and millions of dollars worth of damage to the Jamaican economy.
“We are convinced that a number of them are extra-judicial and nobody is being held accountable for that,” she told IPS.
Although the police say their work is tough and that they are trying to reduce abuses, Barrington Fox remains unconvinced that enough is being done. He was part of a recent delegation that met with Jamaican Prime Minister Portia Simpson Miller to ask for an independent investigative body to examine charges of police corruption, abuses and killing. According to those present, the prime minister was unenthusiastic about the idea.
“As long as I live I will continue to speak out against this,” said Fox, motioning to the picture of his murdered son. “I’m not going to stop. This is not just about my son any more, it’s about a system that’s not working, and we need tha
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