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Summary: This report was presented at a hearing on the use of lethal force by police in Jamaica at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights in March 2008.
On the morning of August 28, 2007, 14 year-old Lance Zab was sitting in front of a neighbourhood shop in Kingston, eating his breakfast of cornbread and juice with another youth, when four policemen from the Jamaican Constabulary Force arrived. Lance’s companion fled, but the boy remained behind as two of the police came through the yard towards him. Eyewitnesses recount how the agents confronted Lance and, without warning, shot him in the stomach and foot. The boy began crying; neighbors heard him begging for his life: “a no mi, please don’t kill me!” The police then dragged the injured boy out to the street, threw him up against a parked car, and according to stunned observers, shot him in the head, strewing pieces of the boy’s skull and “marrow” in the street. A crowd of local residents formed in angry protest, outraged at what neighbours were calling the cold-blooded killing of the quiet, junior-high schooler they knew. The police began firing shots into the air to disperse them. Lance’s cousin managed to arrive on the scene shortly after the incident, and requested permission to pick up his dead relative’s remains. The police agreed. He then picked up the scattered pieces of Lance’s skull, which later were turned over to investigators. Official reports claimed that Lance Zab had been killed in a shoot-out with police involving various men; the officers turned in a handgun presumably used by the boy. At the post-mortem, however, the examiner found no trace of gunpowder on the victim. All they found, still clutched in his hand, was the cornbread Lance had bought for breakfast. As tragic as the death of Lance Zab is, it is merely one of hundreds of such killings committed by members of the Jamaican Constabulary Force (JCF) every year. Since 2004, over 700 Jamaicans - men, women and children like Lance - have been shot and killed by police under circumstances that, in a substantial percentage of cases, point to summary or arbitrary executions. In 2007 alone, a record year for the third year in a row, 272 people died violently at the hands of Jamaican police, the majority of them probable victims of extrajudicial executions. (Another 153 were shot and injured.) For years, national and international human rights organizations have denounced the longstanding practice of excessive use of lethal force by JCF agents. They have also echoed the popular sentiment that such police violence is generally directed at persons belonging to lower socio-economic sectors who reside in marginal or “inner-city” neighbourhoods. What is most alarming about this practice, however, is that, despite these efforts, it is becoming more widespread and systematic than ever before. One of the principal factors motivating the surge in unlawful police killings is the persistence of impunity, which has traditionally protected perpetrators from prosecution in the vast majority of such cases. The miniscule number of police shooting cases involving fatalities or injuries that actually make it to the criminal courts – less than 10 per cent of the total since 1999 – is testimony to the obstacles to accountability that persist. In all that time, there has been only one conviction for murder by a police officer, in 2006. In a seminal 2004 report on the subject, Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), a non-profit, non-partisan citizens’ rights action group, revealed not only that police killings continued, but also that there existed a parallel “pattern of impunity” flowing from the failure of the Jamaican justice system to respond adequately or effectively to this practice. The JFJ report diagnosed a series of institutional deficiencies in the investigation and prosecution of police perpetrators that continue to be of critical importance to the present day. Without proper investigations or true accountability for arbitrary or unlawful police conduct, there is little incentive for agents to control it. This Report seeks to update JFJ’s study with respect to the escalating number of fatal police shootings and extrajudicial executions since 2004, as well as the “pattern of impunity” that feeds it. In addition to providing the latest empirical evidence on police killings, we examine the recent functioning of the authorities, mechanisms, and procedures charged under Jamaican law with ensuring that police who exceed their legal mandate in the use of lethal force are held accountable. Our initial objective is to paint a comprehensive picture of the full-scale human rights crisis prevailing in Jamaica today in this regard. Our second objective is to analyse this situation in light of Jamaica’s legal obligations under the American Convention on Human Rights to determine precisely how and why the country is seriously out of compliance with prevailing standards of civilized conduct. Our final goal, building on the foregoing analysis, is to offer recommendations to the Jamaican authorities to assist them in effecting positive change. Further information
pdf: http://www.crin.org/docs/JJ_IACHR.doc