Questionable Conduct: The Jamaican Political Reality

From the evidence adduced at the Western Kingston Commission of Enquiry there was no joint Police-Military operation in May 2010 with the prime purpose of executing the arrest warrant for Christopher “Dudus” Coke. Officially, the warrant for the arrest of Coke was the remit of the Jamaica Constabulary Force (JCF). However, given the very limited capabilities of the JCF, the assistance of the Jamaica Defence (JDF) was critical to any such operation, even more so given the influence and resources of the Don in question. So in all operations even a token presence of a member of the JCF was mandatory outside of a declared state of emergency. In the latter case the army is given overwhelming police powers, chief among which is the power to arrest. Hence under a declared state of emergency army units need not have a member of the JCF present. It is against this background that the operation to capture Coke must be assessed. • The surveillance party was composed of resources from t...

We have had the opportunity to scrutinize the verbatim notes of the testimony given before the Tivoli COE by the then Commissioner of Police (COP) Owen Ellington.We are somewhat bewildered by some of the revelations made to the COE. Below are some of the most disconcerting: Ellington acted as COP between November 7, 2009 to early April 2010 when he assumed the substantive position until retirement  in 2014. Before that he was DCP in charge of Operations.Yet he only became aware of the request pending for the extradition of Christopher "Dudus" Coke via media reports and knew nothing of any "soft detention " consideration. On May 17, 2010 Ellington heard of the intention of the AG to sign the Authourity to Proceed via the national public broadcast made by then Prime Minister Bruce Golding.On hearing such news the COP-- who had been planning with the CDS Major General Stuart Saunders from mid November or early December 2009--did not immediately make contact with ...