THE Bureau of Special Investigations is now probing the death of Leonard ‘Junior’ Jackson, 32, a taxi operator who went missing Friday and whose body was found Monday in bushes along the Banana Hole Main Road in St Catherine.

Jackson, who was from Clairmont Heights, was said to have been involved in a fist-fight with a policeman shortly before he went missing.

Yesterday, angry residents of Old Harbour, St Catherine mounted roadblocks in a massive demonstration demanding an investigation of Jackson’s disappearance.

They were joined by local taxi operators who withdrew their services in solidarity to force the police to treat the case with urgency.

The protests grew larger and louder after the taxi operator’s decomposing remains were found about a mile away from the Meadowrest Cemetery.

Yesterday, the irate residents and members of Jackson’s family called for an investigation of an alleged altercation with a traffic cop.

“He was a quiet man and the only persons him in worries with is the traffic policeman,” a taxi driver said.

The residents alleged that Jackson and the lawman were involved in a fist-fight after the cop tried to remove the keys from a Toyota motor car Jackson operated as a taxi.

“The policeman drape him and thump him and him drape back the boy and thump him back,” one woman who claimed to have seen the skirmish told the Observer. “The police boy must be shame because them mouth him and tell him say civilian beat him up.”

Jackson, at the time of his death, was facing charges of wounding, assaulting a police officer, malicious destruction of property, resisting arrest and parking in a no parking zone as a result of the incident and was to have attended the Old Harbour Resident Magistrate’s Court on Friday to answer the charges. He never showed up.

This is the second case in a week in which the police have been accused of involvement in the disappearance of civilians.

On Monday, Police Commissioner Francis Forbes asked for assistance from Scotland Yard to crack the case involving two men, Kemar Walters and Oliver Duncan, who have been missing since December 23 last year.

Three policemen assigned to the Organised Crime Investigative Division have been implicated and have been taken off front-line duty. One of the cops was detained on Monday and will be put on an identification parade on Friday.

Jackson’s decomposing remains were found by persons from Kitson Town who were searching for Walters’ remains.

The police, with the assistance of workers from the Meadowrest Cemetery, removed the body from the spot where it was found, placed it in a makeshift box and left it overnight on the dirt road. So advanced was the state of decomposition that an on-the-spot autopsy had to be done.

“At the time of evening when the body was found, the pathologist could not be contacted so we had to secure the body and wait until today,” an investigator said.

The relatives were not informed of the find immediately because the police had not established an identity for the dead man.

“I called the Old Harbour police last night and told them that a body was found and told them to inform the relatives,” one cop from the Spanish Town station told a group of residents who had converged on the spot.

But Jackson’s sister, Nadine Jackson, said they were not informed by the Old Harbour police.

“Old Harbour police don’t call we. Is a policeman from Spanish Town tell we and we go up Old Harbour station go make noise,” Nadine claimed.

Jackson’s hands were bound with seven pieces of electric wire and a black scandal bag were found secured over his head. His eyes and mouth were taped over and a piece of cloth was stuffed in his mouth.

His 64-year-old mother, Sarah Jackson, called down fire and brimstone upon her son’s killer. She, too, blamed the police.

“If a police kill mi pickney, the blood of Jesus is upon you. You must come to justice,” the woman screamed as she held her head in her hands after viewing her son’s remains.

“I am scared because the very people who we trust our protection to are criminals,” Pauline Jackson-Thomas, another sister of the dead man, said.

The body lay in the box for hours until a government pathologist arrived for the post-mortem.

After about an hour’s work, the pathologist gave the official cause of death as asphyxiation, due to suffocation.

The doctor had initially ordered an immediate burial in the interest of public health but irate family members rejected the order and after negotiating, called in the Witter and Sons funeral parlour staff who removed the decomposing body for burial later.

Jackson’s death has left two girls fatherless. He was the sixth of 11 siblings.

walkerk@jamaicaobserver.com