Mark Shields, the deputy commissioner of police with responsibility for crime-fighting, insists that Jamaica’s courts are too lenient in granting bail to persons arrested for serious offences despite the suggestion from Chief Justice Lensely Wolfe that it is up to Parliament to toughen the bail law.

“On too many occasions the courts are giving people bail for murder and shooting and that’s wrong,” Shields, an Englishman who worked for Scotland Yard before taking up the assignment in Jamaica, told the Observer in an interview.

The senior cop’s initial remark preceded the Sunday Observer’s report of July 12 quoting Chief Justice Wolfe as saying in Jamaica’s climate of high levels of violent crime he and other judges believed “that we need to revisit the Bail Act”.

Wolfe had been asked about the court’s policy on bail in the context of a statement by Prime Minister P J Patterson that he would expect the judiciary to conduct a review of the policy.

Like Shields, Patterson was concerned about the number of persons who, released on bail for serious crimes, including murder, were being re-arrested for other offences.

But Wolfe argued that judges were bound by specific criteria in granting bail under the Bail Act of 2000 and suggested that it was up to the legislature to change the law, if it so wished.

But last week Shields, notwithstanding the argument by the Chief Justice, held firmly to his position that too many suspected criminals taken in by the police were finding their way back on the streets and authorised the Observer to publish his initial comments.

“We have re-arrested a number of people this week who were on bail for serious crimes, such as murder and shooting, and we have re-arrested them for committing more murders and more shootings,” he had told the Observer. “That can’t be right.”

Although he did not give specific numbers, Shields alluded to the “large number of offenders” arrested and charged – in the police divisions of St Catherine North (Spanish Town), St Catherine South (Portmore), St Andrew North (Constant Spring) and St Andrew South (Hunts Bay) – for serious crimes, including murder and shooting, but released on bail by the courts upon their first or second appearances in court.

In one specific example, he noted the case of Tesha Miller, 24, who was arrested and charged for a triple murder committed in Braeton, St Catherine, on January 14 but was released on bail by the Spanish Town Criminal Court. While he was on bail, Miller was again arrested and charged with a murder committed at St John’s Road, Spanish Town, on April 7.

Eleven days after Miller’s later arrest, he was again released by the court on bail, Shields recounted.

While hoping for a tougher bail policy, Shields hoped, at least, that law enforcement and the courts can find an accommodation to ensure the principles of justice and the rights of the individual are adhered to while at the same time protecting the safety of the community.

“.What I am saying is the police and the courts have to work together and we must ensure that the system is such that if we get our case papers in order we should be able to keep them (suspects of serious crime) in custody,” he said. “I think that (bailing them) is wrong and we have to review that.”

Added Shields: “We are taking counsel from a number of people… I will be consulting with the commissioner of police (Lucius Thomas) and people in the judiciary about what we can do to be more effective.

If it is something we are doing wrong, we will put our house in order.”