ABOUT 20 placard-bearing demonstrators of various citizens’ rights groups yesterday protested outside the offices of the Ministry of National Security in Kingston, demanding justice for the March 14, 2001 killing of seven young men by police in Braeton, St Catherine.

The seven, aged between 15 and 20 years, were killed in what the police claimed was a shoot-out in the St Catherine community.

“We demand accountability, transparency, justice” and “Justice delayed is justice denied”, read two of the many placards displayed along Old Hope Road by protestors, who began gathering at about 7:00 am, distributing leaflets asking “How many more must die before we have accountability”?, until approximately midday.

Dorothy Lawrence, mother of 20 year-old Andre Virgo, who was among the slain “Braeton Seven”, told the Observer: “I am here seeking justice, not for my child alone but for each and every one of us. We are not against police officers, but there are some policemen in the force who are giving all the others a bad name… we need to flush out the bad ones so that the force can do its job in the right and proper way.”

“Two years ago we were out here demonstrating and the authorities, including the minister, said to us ‘don’t rush to justice, let the process work’ but two years later the process has not worked,” said executive director of Jamaicans for Justice (JFJ), Dr Carolyn Gomes. She told the Observer that the Government concluded its investigations but has not supplied adequate answers, adding “so we are out here saying ‘we want answers’ because Braeton represents not just those seven boys but the 280-plus who have been killed by the police since the Braeton Seven were killed, all the thousands who were killed before and it represents an approach to crime fighting that is not working, and it needs accountability”.

Gomes said that JFJ and the other organisations plan to keep up the pressure on the Government but said she was not ready to reveal what further steps they would be taking.

August Town community activist Kenneth Wilson, who also participated in the demonstration, said that the police’s approach to fighting crime was only causing more crime, “because of their excesses”. He said that despite a promise from Security Minister Peter Phillips that the security forces would be making every effort to build harmonious relationships between the force and communities as part of the new anti-crime initiative, there were still too many instances of “rogue cops undoing all the work of the good cops who want to take a different approach”.

Amnesty International’s Piers Bannister, who was at the demonstration, told the Observer that the Government’s process of investigation into the slaying of the Braeton Seven was “wholly and totally inadequate to actually find out the facts of what happened”. He said that the buck stops with the minister of national security and the attorney-general because it is their job to ensure that in every case the system works and in this case and very many others, the system has clearly not worked”.

Government, he said, needs to reopen the investigation and to ensure that it is done properly and that the evidence is placed before a court so that a judge and jury can decide which police officer is responsible and, if they are guilty, an appropriate sanction applied.

A coroner’s inquest into the killings did not find the police criminally responsible for the deaths, which Amnesty described as “manifestly inadequate”.

The jury at the coroner’s inquest did not hear testimony from the police officers whose bullets were found in the seven, as the officers declined to take the stand for fear of incriminating themselves.