A People’s National Party-affiliated group, Resource Group Seven, has called on the Government to set up a special team of investigators comprising foreigners to review questionable shootings by police here.

But the suggestion, made to the national security ministry and the Police High Command, was immediately cold-shouldered by key persons, including a senior police officer who is himself on assignment from overseas.

Resource Group Seven, a pressure group which is led by influential PNP activist Paul Burke, made the call last Tuesday at its annual general meeting, and in the wake of comments by Police Commissioner Lucius Thomas that the police would be undergoing increased training in weapons handling in order to combat the high rates of fatal shootings carried out by cops.

Between January 2004 and December last year, 493 persons have been fatally shot by police.

But Thomas also made it plain he had cop killers on his mind too. So far this year, six police officers have been cut down by gunmen’s bullets, and Thomas declared that the police would not “cower when they came under attack” from criminal elements.

“Investigations into all incidents of questionable police shootings should be carried out by a special independent team of investigators based here in Jamaica,” Resource Group Seven said.

“We are aware that there are several legitimate and justified police shootings where persons cry foul, but there are also too many questionable and disturbing shootings by members of the constabulary,” the group said in its letter.

The local police first sought overseas help after the May 2003 killings of two women and two men at a house in Crawle, Clarendon by members of the now-disbanded Crime Management Unit, which was headed by former glamour cop, Senior Superintendent Reneto Adams. Adams and six other cops were arrested and charged with second degree murder,

but were acquitted in December 2005. However, Adams has since been relegated to a desk job.

But Susan Goffe, chairman of human rights group Jamaicans For Justice (JFJ), questioned the wisdom of appointing overseas investigators, saying that the Police Oversight Authority, the Police Public Complaints Authority (PPCA) and the Bureau of Special investigations needed to be given the teeth, through legislation, to effectively investigate questionable police actions before seeking overseas help.

Assistant Commissioner Les Green, who was flown in from Scotland Yard to bolster the constabulary’s crime-fighting capabilities, agreed with Goffe.

“There needs to be an independent element, but we don’t need help from outside. There are good judges and good lawyers here who can do the job,” Green told the Sunday Observer.

His sentiments were echoed by junior minister of security, Donald Rhodd, who pointed out that he was sharing his own views and not that of the ministry. “It’s a neo-colonial view that we cannot find persons of competence in our system to do the job. We have that capacity,”

Rhodd said.

A day after Resource Group Seven’s request, JFJ issued a release praising a Supreme Court ruling that a fresh inquest be held into the November 2002 fatal shooting of Damion Roache, who was shot by police on White Wing Walk in Kingston 11.

According to Goffe, Roache was a mentally challenged man who was shot as he ran from a police patrol. In July 2005, the cops involved walked free after a jury ruled that Roache’s death was an accidental killing and no one was criminally responsible.

The new inquest was ordered after the JFJ’s legal counsel, who represents Roache’s mother, applied for the ruling to be set aside as several statements from witnesses, recorded by the PPCA, were not presented as evidence during the trial.

Goffe also pointed to the cases of Michael Gayle and Janice Allen as further examples.

“There are numerous other cases where the court was told the evidence was eaten by rats, burnt in a fire and pages have gone missing from log books,” Goffe said.

Gayle died from injuries he received during a brutal beating at the hands of police and soldiers in August 1999. As in the case of Roache, no one was held criminally responsible for Gayle’s death, although a coroner’s court ruled that Gayle’s death was a manslaughter caused by excessive beating by the security forces.

The Government has, however, accepted liability for Gayle’s death and compensated his mother, Jenny Cameron, to the tune of $2 million.

Allen was shot by a cop in West Kingston in 2001 and human rights groups contend that there were serious breaches of procedure by policemen at the Denham Town Police Station after the court was told that pages from the firearm log book had gone missing, and later, that the book had been destroyed in a fire.

“Until now there has been no record of that mysterious fire,” Goffe said.