POLICE Commissioner Francis Forbes yesterday formally rejected a Jamaica Labour Party claim of the creation of a special squad to disrupt its election campaign and asked Opposition Leader Edward Seaga to do something to repair the harm he caused with the allegation.

In fact, Forbes reiterated that the group to which the Opposition referred was a Rapid Response unit, capable of responding to large-scale criminal activity and said that a special investigation he ordered into its establishment had vindicated it of any politicisation of either recruitment or structure. The group is now operational.

“People who have volunteered to risk their lives in the interest of the country feel that the political direction in which they have been pointed out has done severe damage to them and put their families at risk,” Forbes told reporters at a press conference.

“I have asked him (Seaga), in his own way to send a message that he continues to be committed to working with the police,” the police chief added.

The JLP leader had earlier made the claims of the political squad, but Seaga formally wrote to Forbes on March 27 alleging that 41 members of the constabulary had been chosen for specialist training to target his party’s supporters in the lead up to elections, which Prime Minister P J Patterson has said will be held by year-end.

The selection of the men, the Opposition party said, had been done by Senior Superintendent Hector “Bingie” White.

Seaga also claimed potential recruits, during the constabulary’s manpower drive earlier this year, were interviewed by former junior security minister Col Leslie Lloyd; the head of the controversial Crime Management Unit, Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams; and the head of the Area 4 police, Senior Superintendent Donald Pusey.

The JLP has, in the past, linked White, Adams and Pusey with the ruling People’s National Party (PNP) or at least suggest that they were anti-JLP. The implication was that the recruits would have to have pro-PNP leanings — a claim also rebuffed by Forbes.

A proposed anti-terrorist response team was first publicly mooted by the national security minister in January after the New Year’s Day killings at Park Lane off Red Hills Road in Kingston and the retaliatory massacre of eight persons at 100 Lane days later by a large group of gunmen.

In yesterday’s statement, which followed an investigation led by Assistant Commissioner Walcott Brown, Forbes said that he had taken the decision to train and deploy “a tactical response team” comprising members of the police and the military “who would be jointly trained”.

Deputy Commissioner of Police Tilford Johnson was mandated to implement the decision and to form committees from the police and the Jamaica Defence Force.

On the police side, the response team would be based at the Mobile Reserve and under the command of the assistant commissioner in charge of that squad, Assistant Commissioner Leebert Lawrence. Members were drawn from both Mobile Reserve and the Special Anti-Crime Task Force.

“The criteria for selection was based on professionalism and had nothing to do with politics,” Forbes said, basing his position on Brown’s investigation.

Senior Superintendent White was involved in selecting the men, said Forbes.

Added the police chief: “It was neither expressed nor implied to team members that their duties would entail the disruption of the JLP’s election campaign machinery, terrorise JLP supporters or to behave in any other unprofessional manner.”

On the issue of the selection of new recruits, Forbes, based on the Brown investigation, dismissed that any recruitment was done at the Hilton Kingston Hotel and said that Lloyd “was never engaged in the recruitment, selection and interviewing process”.

Neither was there any involvement of Adams or Pusey, he said.

Forbes also denied another, and apparently separate, allegation by Seaga that a member of the Rapid Response squad, Sergeant Warren Turner, had received 2,000 rounds of ammunition to be handed over to East Kingston businessman and ruling PNP activist, Danhai Williams.

In fact, the investigation showed, on Janaury 24 Turner went to the police armoury to collect an assortment of ammunition and smoke grenades for training on a requisition by Assistant Commissioner Lawrence. All the items were handed over to the stores at Mobile Reserve and properly accounted for.

“The investigation found nothing which could lend credibility to the allegations made, and it is my hope that the Right Honourable Leader of the Opposition will find favour with the final outcome,” Forbes said. “I have made a request of Mr Seaga that in the future he gives consideration to sharing concerns of this nature with me prior to going public.”

Seaga, he said, had created unnecessary panic in the society and a “negative impact on the morale of the force”.