No excuse for no body cam footage
THE EDITOR, Sir: IT HAS been reported that in an incident last Friday evening in Braeton, St Catherine, the police shot five men, four of them fatally. As INDECOM conducts its investigation into this incident, I think of the potential value that police body-worn camera footage might have provided to that investigation. It is unlikely, however, that any such footage exists.
Although the US Embassy donated 120 body-worn cameras to the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF) in August 2016 and the JCF reported in February 2017 that the cameras were being deployed in four divisions, INDECOM reported in its fourth quarterly report for 2017 that no body cameras had been worn by the police in any of the incidents being investigated by that body. Not in any planned or unplanned operation; not in any interaction resulting in death or injury. INDECOM had received no body-camera footage of any incident under its investigation. They confirmed at their May 17, 2018, press conference that this was still the case as of that date.
In a Gleaner article on May 9, 2018, titled ‘Police not making full use of body cameras – Commissioner’, Police Commissioner Antony Anderson is quoted as follows regarding the limited use of body-worn cameras: “One, you don’t have enough, and two, our uniforms don’t have the technology to actually properly wear them. We are looking at some other models that we have seen recently. We have met some representatives up to last week that, perhaps, will suit what we do better.”
Though it is good that the police commissioner answered a reporter’s question about the lack of body-worn camera footage, this is not a sufficient response. It is time that the minister of national security gives a full update in Parliament on the status of the body-worn camera project.This is a policy that has had bipartisan support and that has been put forward as an important tool for increasing accountability and professionalism in the police force. The project was launched with great fanfare and the wearing of body cameras was actually included in the Law Reform (Zones of Special Operations)(Special Security and Community Development Measures) Act. To date, the project has yielded not one single piece of footage to any investigation by INDECOM.
I think the Jamaican people are owed an official explanation.