Commish pushes back at critics
Anderson says not charging persons doesn’t mean they were not involved in criminal activities
THE FACT that thousands of persons have been detained under the state of public emergency (SOE) in St James and released without being charged is not confirmation that they are not involved in criminal activities, Police Commissioner Major General Antony Anderson has cautioned.
Anderson, in seeking to underscore his position, pointed critics to the 70 per cent drop in murders across the parish last year.
“Operations that are not driven by information, intelligence and knowledge cannot give you a 70 per cent decline in murders,” Anderson told lawmakers yesterday during a meeting of the Internal and External Affairs Committee (IEAC) of Parliament.
“I’m pretty certain that if these people who were doing it [committing crimes] before were not the ones we managed to affect, then we wouldn’t have gotten the results we got.”
He added: “I wouldn’t go to the extent that persons were not involved in crime because we did not charge them with any crime.”
SUMMONED TO APPEAR BEFORE IEAC
The police commissioner and the top brass of the Jamaica Defence Force were summoned to appear before the IEAC to respond to a scathing report by the Office of the Public Defender (OPD) on the conduct of the SOEs.
The report by the OPD, which was submitted to the IEAC last November, revealed that nearly 4,000 persons, mainly from inner-city communities in St James, were detained in the SOE up to October last year. Of this number, the OPD said 130 persons were charged mainly with minor offences.
Public Defender Arlene Harrison Henry told the committee at the time that her office had concerns that the detentions appeared to be arbitrary and not supported by intelligence.
Harrison Henry also raised concerns about reports that some detainees spent long periods in police custody during the SOE.
However, the police commissioner, in denying the assertions, pointed out that the activities that took place under the SOE have a context.
“It is not one of arbitrariness. It is one that has been informed by intelligence analysis, hotspot analysis, where we look at the concentration of violence over time,” Anderson said.
As a result, the police chief said he is “reasonably comfortable” that most of the persons detained in the SOE “were deserving of it”.
AVERAGE 13 PERSONS PER DAY
Anderson revealed, too, that on average, 75 per cent of the persons who were detained were released in two days, 41 per cent were released the day after they were picked up, while 22 per cent were released the same day.
Noting that the security forces conducted “hundreds” of operations during the St James SOE, the police commissioner revealed that on average 13 persons were detained per day.
“The highest day was the first day (January 18 last year) when we did 86,” he said.
St James recorded 335 murders in 2017, and according to Anderson, “the numbers for 2018 were trending higher than that”.
As a result, he said operations were conducted in the nine communities “where the killings were highest over a protracted period”.